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OLIVER 




DSMITH. 



%ILLrAM -SLACK. 



Entcrpd at th^ Post Offlee, N. V., ax spcond-clasa mattrj, 
C'>i>yriKht, 1883, by Johv W. Lotell <Vi. 



NE,W YORKcS 



.- ^: -r ^ir u ^ ^ . . tt . ,:;»: 14. i^i^ Vl^3EY STREET 




¥3»i»a|.aiiLi»lik^»%f 



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LOVELL's library:-catalogue: 



1. 

3. 

3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 
8. 
9. 
10. 

11. 

12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 
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51, 
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57. 
58. 
69. 
60, 
61 



Hyperion, by H. W. Longfellow. .20 
Outre-Mer, by H. W. Longfellow. 20 

The Happy Boy, by BjOrnson 10 

Arne, by Bjoruson 10 

Frankenstein, by Mrs. Shelley... 10 

The Last of the Mohicans 20 

Clytie, by Joseph Hatton 20 

The Moonstone, by ColUn8,P't I.IO 
The Moonstone, by Collins, P'tlL 10 
Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. 20 

The Coming Race, by Lytton 10 

Leila, by Lord Lytton 10 

The Three Spaniards, by Walker. 20 
TheTricks of the GreeksUnveiled.20 
L'Abbe Constantin, by Halevy .20 
Freckles, by R. F. Redclifl. . . .20 
The Dark Colleen, by Harriett Jay .20 
They Were Married! by Walter 

Besant and James Rice 10 

Seekers after God, by Farrar 20 

The Spanish Nun, byDeQuincey.lO 

The Green Mountain Boys 20 

Fleurette, by Eugene Scribe 20 

Second Thoughts, by Broughton.20 
The New Magdalen, by Collins. .20 

Divorce, by Slargaret Lee 20 

Life of Washington, by Henley. .20 
Social Etiquette, by Mrs. Saville.l5 
Single Heart and Double Fac9. .10 

Irene, by Carl Detlef .204 

Vice Versa, by F. Anstey. ...... .20 

Ernest Maltravers, by Lord Lytton20 
The Haunted House and Calderon 

the Courtier, by Lord Lytton,. 10 
John Halifax, by Mi.«s Mulock. . .20 

800 Leagues on the Amazon 10 

The Cryptogram, by Jules Verne. 10 

Life of Marion, by Horry 20 

Paul and Virginia 10 

Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens. .2 » 

The Hermits, by Kingsley 20 

An Adventure in Thule, and Mar- 
riage of Moira Fergus, Black .10 

A Marriage in High Life 20 

Robin, by Mrs. Parr 20 

Two on a Tower, by Thos. Hardy.20 

Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson 10 

Alice; or, the Mysteries, being 

Part II. of Ernest Maltravers.. 20 
Duke of Kandos, by A. Mathey. ..20 

Baron Munchausen 10 

A Princess of Thule, by Black.. 20 
The Secret Despatch, by Grant, 20 
Early Days of Christianity, by 

Canon Farrar, D D , Part I. . . .20 
Early Days of Christianity , Pt. 11.20 
Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith. 10 
Progress and Poverty, by Henry 

George 20 

The Spy, by Cooper 20 

Ea»^t Lynne, by Mrs. Wood... 20 
A Strange Story, by Lord Lytton... 20 

Adam Bede, by Eliot, Parti 15 

Adam Bede, Part II 15 

The Golden Shaft, by Gibbon. . . .20 

Portia, by The Duchess .-.20 

Last Days of Pompeii, by Lytton . . 20 
The Two Duchesses, by Mathey. .20 
Tom Brown's School Days .-20 



62. 



63. 

64. 

65. 
66. 
67. 

68. 
69. 
70. 
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101. 
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103. 

104. 

105. 

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107. 

108. 
109. 
110. 
111. 
132. 



The Wooing O't, by Mrs. Alex- 
ander, Parti 15 

The Wooing O't, Part II 15 

The Vendetta, by Balzac 20 

Hypatia,byChas.Kiug«ley,P'tI.15 
Hypatia. by Kingsley, Part II — 15 

Selma.by Mrs. J. G. Smith 15 

Margaret and' her Bridesmaids. .20 
Horse Shoe Robinson, Part I — 15 
Horse Shoe Robinson, Part II. . . 15 

Gulliver's Travels, by Swift 20 

Amos Barton, by George Eliot... 10 

The Berber, by W. E. Mayo 20 

Silas Marner, by George Eliot. . .10 

The Queen of the County 20 

Life of Cromwell, by Hood... 15 
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. 20 

Child's History of England 20 

Molly Bawn, by The Duchess. . .20 

Pillone, by William BergsOe 15 

Phyllis, by The Duchess 20 

Romola, by Geo. Eliot, Part I. . .15 
Romola, by Geo. Eliot, Part II. . 15 

Science in Short Chapters 20 

Zanoni, by Lord Lytton 20 

A Daughter of Heth 20 

The Right and Wrong Uses of 
the Bible, R. Heber Newton. ..20 

Night and Morning, Pt. 1 15 

Night and Morning. Part II 15 

Shandon Bells, by Wm. Black.. 20 

Monica, by the Duchess 10 

Heart and Science, by Collins. . .20 
The Golden Calf, by Braddon. . .20 

The Dean's Daughter 20 

Mrs. Geoffrey, by The Duchess. .20 

Pickwick Papers, Part 1 20 

Pickwick Papers, Part II 20 

Airy, Fairy Lilian, The Duchess. 20 
McLeod of Dare, by Wm. Black.20 
Tempest Tossed, by Tilton P 1 1 20 
Tempest Tossed,by Tilton, PtIISO 
Letters from High Latitudes, by 

Lord Dufferin 20 

Gideon Fleyce, by Lucy 20 

India and Ceylon, by E. HsEckel . .20 

The Gypsy Queen 20 

The Admiral's Ward 20 

Nimport, by E. L. Bynner, P't 1.15 
Nimport, by E. L. Bynner, P't II . 15 

Harry Holbrooke 20 

Tritons, by E. L. Bynner, P't I. . .15 
Tritons, by E. L. Bynner, P til.. 15 
Let Nothing You Dismay, by 

Walter Besant 10 

Lady Audley's Secret, by Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

Woman's Place To-day, by Mrs. 

Lillie Devereux Blake 20 

Dunallan, by Kennedy, Parti. . . 15 
Dunallan, by Kennedy, Part II. .15 
Housekeeping and Home- mak- 
ing, by Marion Harland 15 

No New Thing, by W. E. Norrig.20 

The Spoopendyke Papers 20 

False Hopes, by Goldwin Smith. 15 

Labor and Capital 20 

Wanda, by Ouida, Part 1 15 

Wanda, by Ouida, Part II 16 



GOLDSMITH. 



WILLIAM BLACK. 



//- 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 

14 AND 16 Vesey Street. 



CONTENTS. 



» 

CHAPTER I. 

Pack. 
^TRODUCTORY . . .' 7 

CHAPTER II. 
:hool and college . lo 

CHAPTER HI. 

DLENESS, AND FOREIGN TRAVEL I4 

CHAPTER IV. 

ARLY STRUGGLES. — HACK-WRITING 18 

CHAPTER V. 

EGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP. — THE EEE 24 

CHAPTER yi. 

ERSONAL TRAITS , 3O 

CHAPTER VII. 

HE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. — -BEAU NASH 33 



6 CONTENTS. 

Pagb. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ARREST 43 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE TRAVELLER 48 

CHAPTER X. 

MISCELLANEOUS WRITING 52 

CHAPTER X. 

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 55 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE GOOD-NATURED MAN 62 

CHAPTER XIII. 

GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY ^^ 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE DESERTED VILLAGE 73 

CHAPTER XV. 

OCCASIONAL WRITINGS Si 

CHAPTER XVI. 

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER S6 

CHAPTER XVII. 

INCREASING DIFFICULTIES, — THE END 9I 



GOLDSMITH. 

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

" Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream of life is 
wisdom." So wrote Oliver Goldsmith ; and surely among those 
who have earned the world's gratitude by this ministration he must 
be accorded a conspicuous place. If, in these delightful writings 
of his, he mostly avoids the darker problems of existence — if the 
mystery of the tragic and apparently unmerited and unrequited 
suffering in the world is rarely touched upon — we can pardon the 
omission for the sake of ths gentle optimism that would rather 
look on the kindly side of life. " You come hot and tired from the 
day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you," says Mr. 
Thackeray. " Who could harm the kind vagrant harper ? Whom 
did he ever hurt ? He carries no weapon save the harp on which 
he plays to you ; and with which he delights great and humble, 
young and old, the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round the 
fire, or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches 
he stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty." And it 
is to be suspected — it is to be hoped, at least — that the cheerful- 
ness which shines like sunlight through Goldsmith's writings, did 
not altogether desert himself even in the most trying hours of his 
wayward and troubled career. He had, with all his sensitiveness, 
a fine happy-go-lucky disposition ; was ready for a frolic when he 
had a guinea, and, when he had none, could turn a sentence on the 
humorous side of starvation ; and certainly never attributed to the 
injustice or neglect of society misfortunes the origin of which lay 
nearer home. 

Of course, a very dark picture might be drawn of Goldsmith's 
life ; and the sufferings that he undoubtedly endured have been 
made a whip with which to lash the ingratitude of a world not too 
quick to recognise the claims of genius. He has been put before 
us, without any brighter lights to the picture, as the most unfor- 



8 GOLDSMITH. 

tunate of poor devils ; the heart-broken usher ; the hack ground 
down by sordid booksellers ; the sta.rving occupant of successive 
garrets. This is the aspect of Goldsmith's career which naturally 
attracts Mr. Forster. IMr. Forster seems to have been haunted 
throughout his life by the idea that Providence had some special 
spite against literary persons ; and that, in a measure to compen- 
sate them for their sad lot, society should be very kind to them, 
while the Government of the day might make them Companions of 
the Bath or give them posts in the Civil Service. In the otherwise 
copious, thorough, and valuable Life and Times of Oliver Gold- 
sDiith, we find an almost humiliating insistance on the complaint 
that Oliver Goldsmith did not receive greater recognition and 
larger sums of money from his contemporaries. i/Goldsmith is 
here '• the poor neglected sizar ; " his " marked ill-fortune " at- 
tends him constantly ; he shares " the evil destinies of men of 
letters ; " he was one of those who " struggled into fame without 
the aid of Enghsh institutions ; " in short, " he wrote, and paid 
the penalty." Nay, even Christianity itself is impeached on ac- 
count of the persecution suffered by poor Goldsmith. "There 
had been a Christian religion extant for seventeen hundred and 
fifty-seven years," writes Mr. Forster, "• the world having been ac- 
quainted, for even so long, with its spiritual necessities and re- 
sponsibilities ; yet here, in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
was the eminence ordinarily conceded to a spiritual teacher, to one 
of those men who come upon the earth to hft their fellow-men 
above its miry ways. He is up in a garret, writing for bread he 
cannot get, and dunned for a milk-score he cannot pay." That 
Christianity might have been worse employed than in paying the 
milkman's score is true enough, for then the milkman would have 
come by his own ; but that Christianity, or the state, or society 
should be scolded because an author suffers the natural conse- 
quences of his allowing his expenditure to exceed his income, 
seems a little hard. And this is a sort of writing that is peculiarly 
inappropriate in the case of Goldsmith, who, if ever any man was 
author of his own misfortunes, may fairly have the charge brought 
against him. "Men of genius," sa3'S Mr. Forster, "can more 
easily starve, than the world, with safety to itself, can continue to 
neglect and starve them." Perhaps so ; but the English nation, 
which has always had a regard and even love for Oliver Gold- 
smith, that is quite peculiar 'in the history of Hterature, and which 
has been glad to overlook his faults and follies, and eager to sym- 
pathise with him in the many miseries of his career, will be slow 
to beheve that it is responsible for any starvation that Goldsmith 
may have endured. 

However, the key-note has been firmly struck, and it still 
vibrates. Goldsmith was the unluckiest of mortals, the hapless 
victim of circumstances. " Yielding to that united pressure of 
labour, penury, and sorrow, with a frame exhausted by unremitting 
and ill-rewarded drudgery, Goldsmith was indebted to the forbear- 
ance of creditors for a peacc^ful burial." But what, now, if some 



GOLDSMITH. 9 

foreigner strange to the traditions of English literature — some 
Japanese student, for example, or the New Zealander come before 
his time — were to go over the ascertained facts of Goldsmith's life, 
and were suddenly to announce to us, with the happy audacity of 
ignorance, that he, Goldsmith, was a quite exceptionally fortunate 
person ? " Why," he might say, " I find that in a country where 
the vast majority of people are born to labour, Oliver Goldsmith 
was never asked to do a stroke of work towards the earning of his 
own living until he had arrived at man's estate. All that was ex- 
pected of him, as a youth and as a young man, was that he should 
equip himself fully for the battle of life. He was maintained at 
college until he had taken his degree. Again and again he was 
furnished with funds for further study and foreign travel ; and 
again and again he gambled his opportunities away. The constant 
kindness of his uncle only made him the best begging-letter-writer 
the world has seen. In the midst of his debt and distress as a 
bookseller's drudge, he receives ^400 for three nights' perform- 
ance of The Good-NaturedManj he immediately purchases cham- 
bers in Brick Court for ;!{^4oo; and forthwith begins to borrow as 
before. It is true that he died owing ^2000, and was indebted to 
the forbearance of creditors for a peaceful burial ; but it appears 
that during the last seven years of his life he had been earning an 
annual income equivalent to ^800 of English currency.* He was 
a man liberally and affectionately brought up, who had many rela- 
tives and many friends, and who had the proud "satisfaction — 
which has been denied to many men of genius — of knowing for 
years before he died that his merits as a writer had been recog- 
nised by the great bulk of his countrymen. And yet this strange 
English nation is inclined to suspect that it treated him rather 
badly ; and Christianity is attacked because it did not pay Gold- 
smith's milk-score." 

Our Japanese friend may be exaggerating ; but his position is, 
after all, fairly tenable. It may at least be looked at, before enter- 
ing on the following brief j'htmid of the leading facts in Gold- 
smith's life, if only to restore our equanimity. For, naturally, it is 
not pleasant to think that any previous generation, however neg- 
lectful of the claims of literary persons (as compared with the 
claims of such wretched creatures as physicians, men of science, 
artists, engineers, and so forth) should so cruelly have ill-treated 
one whom we all love now. This inheritance of ingratitude is 
more than we can bear. Is it true that Goldsmith was so harshly 
dealt with by those barbarian ancestors of ours ? 

* The calculation is Lord Macaulay's : see his Biographical Essays, 



lo GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER II. 

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. 

The Goldsmiths were of English descent ; Goldsmith's father 
was a Protestant clergyman in a poor little village in the county of 
Longford ; and when Oliver, one of several children, was born in 
this village of Pallas, or Pallasmore, on tlie loth November, 1728, 
the Rev. Charles Goldsmith was passing rich on ^40 a year. But 
a couple of years later Mr. Goldsmith succeeded to a more lucra- 
tive living ; and forthwith removed his family to the village of 
Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath. 

Here at once our interest in the story begins: is this Lissoy the 
sweet Auburn that we have known and loved since our childhood ? 
Lord Macaulay, with a great deal of vehemence, avers that it is 
not ; that there never was any such hamlet as Auburn in Ireland ; 
that The Deserted Village is a hopelessly incongruous poem ; and 
that Goldsmith, in combining a description of a probably Kentish 
village with a description of an Irish ejectment, " has produced 
something which never was, and never will be, seen in any part of 
the world." This criticism is ingenious and plausible, but it is 
unsound, for it happens to overlook one of the radical facts of 
human natu-re — the magnifying delight of the mind in what is long 
remembered and remote. What was it that the imagination of 
Goldsmith, in his life-long banishment, could not see when he 
looked back to the house of his childhood, and his early friends, 
and the spots and occupations of his youth ? Lissoy was no doubt 
a poor enough Irish village ; and perhaps the farms were not too 
well cultivated ; and perhaps the village preacher, who was so dear 
to all the country round, had to administer many a thrashing to a 
certain graceless son of his ; and perhaps Paddy Byrne was some- 
thing of a pedant ; and no doubt pigs ran over the " nicely sanded 
floor " of the inn ; and no doubt the village statesmen occasionally 
indulged in a free fight. But do you think that was the Lissoy 
that Goldsmith thought of in his dreary lodgings in Fleet-street 
courts? No. It was the Lissoy where the vagrant lad had first 
seen the " primrose peep beneath the thorn;" where he had list- 
ened to the mysterious call of the bittern by the unfrequented 
river ; it was a Lissoy still ringing with the glad laughter of young 
people in the twilight hours ; it was a Lissoy forever beautiful, 
and tender, and far away. The grown-up Goldsmith had not to go 



GOLDSMITH. u 

to any Kentish villar;c for a model ; the familiar scenes of his 
youth, rcjardcd with all the wistfulness and longing of an exile, 
became glorified enough. " If I go to the opera where Signora 
Colomba pours out all the mazes of melody," he writes to Mr. 
Hodson, " I sit and sigh for Lissoy's fireside, and John7iy Arm- 
stroftg's Last Good Night from Peggy Golden." 

There was but little in the circumstances of Goldsmith's early 
life likely to fit him for, or to lead him into, a literary career; in 
fact, he did not take to literature until he had tried pretty nearly 
every thing else as a method of earning a living. If he was in- 
tended for anything, it was no doubt his father's wish that he 
should enter the Church ; and he got such education as the poor 
Irish clergyman — who was not a very provident person — could 
afford. The child Goldsmith was first of all taught his alphabet at 
home, by a maid-servant, who was also a relation of the family; 
then, at the age of six, he was sent to that village school which, 
with its profound and learned master, he has made familiar to all 
of us ; and after that he was sent further a-field for his learning, 
being moved from this to the other boarding-school as the occasion 
demanded. Goldsmith's school-life could not have been altogether 
a pleasant time for him. We hear, indeed, of his being concerned 
in a good many frolics — robbing orchards, and the like ; and it is 
said that he attained proficiency in the game of fives. But a shy 
and sensitive lad like Goldsmith, who was eagerly desirous of 
being thought well of, and whose appearance only invited the 
thoughtless but cruel ridicule of his schoolmates, must have suf- 
fered a good deal. He was little, pitted with the small-pox, and 
awkward ; and schoolboys are amazingly frank. He was not 
strong enough to thrash them into respect of him ; he had no big 
brother to become his champion ; his pocket-money was not lavish 
enough to enable him to buy over enemies or subsidize allies. 

In similar circumstances it has sometimes happened that a boy 
physically inferior to his companions has consoled himself by prov- 
ing his mental prowess — has scored off his failure at cricket by the 
taking of prizes, and has revenged himself for a drubbing by writ- 
ing a lampoon. But even this last resource was not open to Gold- 
smith. He was a dull boy ; " a stupid, heavy blockhead," is Dr. 
Strean's phrase in summing up the estimate formed of young Gold- 
smith by his contemporaries at school. Of course, as soon as he 
became famous, everybody began to hunt up recollections of his 
having said or done this or that, in order to prove that there were 
signs of the*coming greatness. People began to remember that he 
had been suspected of scribbling verses, which he burned. What 
schoolboy has not done the like ? We know how the biographers 
of great painters point out to us that their hero early showed the 
bent of his mind hy drawing the figures of animals on doors and 
walls with a piece of chalk ; as to which it may be observed that, 
if every schoolboy who scribbled verses and sketched in chalk on 
a brick wall were to grow up a genius, poems and pictures would 
be plentiful enough. However, there is the apparently authenti- 



12 GOLDSMITH, 

cated anecdote of young Goldsmith's turning the tables on the fid- 
dler at his uncle's dancing-party. The fiddler, struck by the odd 
look of the boy who was capering about the room, called out 
" ^sop ! " whereupon Goldsmith is said to have instantly replied, 

"Our herald hath proclaimed this saying, 
See iEsop dancing and his monkey playing I " 

But even if this story be true, it is worth nothing as an augury; 
for quickness of repartee was precisely the accomplishment which 
the adult Goldsmith conspicuously lacked. Put a pen into his 
hand, and shut him up -in a room : then he was master of the situ- 
ation — nothing could be more incisive, polished, and easy than his 
playful sarcasm. But in society any fool could get the better of 
him by a sudden question followed by a horse-laugh. All through 
his life — even after he had become one of the most famous of hv- 
ing writers — Goldsmith suffered from want of self-confidence. He 
was too anxious to please. In his eager acquiescence, he would 
blunder into any trap that was laid for him. A grain or two of the 
stolid self-sufficiency of the blockheads who laughed at him would 
not only have improved his character, but would have considerably 
added to the happiness of his life. 

As a natural consequence of this timidity, Goldsmith, when 
opportunity served, assumed airs of magnificent importance. 
Every one knows the story of the mistake on which She Stoops to 
Conquer is founded. Getting free at last from all the turmoil, and 
anxieties, and mortifications of school-life, and returning home on 
a lent hack, the released schoolboy is feeling very grand indeed. 
He is not sixteen, would fain pass for a man, and has a whole 
golden guinea in his pocket. And so he takes the journey very 
leisurely until, getting benighted in a certain village, he asks the 
way to the " best house," and is directed by a facetious person to 
the house of the squire. The squire by good luck falls in with the 
joke ; and then we have a very pretty comedy indeed — the impe- 
cunious schoolboy playing the part of a fine gentleman on the 
strength of his solitary guinea, ordering a bottle of wine after sup- 
per, and inviting his landlord and his landlord's wife and daughter 
to join him in the supper-room. The contrast, in She Stoops to 
Conqjie?', between Marlow's embarrassed diffidence on certain oc- 
casions and his audacious effrontery on others, found many a paral- 
lel in the incidents of Goldsmith's own life ; and it is not improb- 
able that the writer of the comedy was thinking of some of his own 
experiences, when he made Miss Hardcastle say to her timid 
suitor : '• A want of courage upon some occasions assumes the 
appearance of ignorance, and betrays us when we most want to 
excel.'- 

It was, perhaps, just as well that the supper, and bottle of wine, 
and lodging at Squire Featherston's had not to be paid for out of 
the schoolboy's guinea'; for young Goldsmith was now on his way 
to college, and the funds at the disposal of the Goldsmith family 



GOLDSMITH, 



13 



were not over-abundant. Goldsmith's sister having married the 
son of a well-to-do man, her father considered it a point of honour 
that she should have a dowry ; and in giving her a sum of ^400 he 
so crippled the means of the family, that Goldsmith had to be sent 
to college, not as a pensioner but as a sizar. It appears that the 
young gentleman's pride revolted against this proposal ; and that 
he was won over to consent only by the persuasions ot his uncle 
Contarine, who himself had been a sizar. So Goldsmith, now in 
his eighteenth year, went to Dublin ; managed somehow or other — 
though he was the last in the list — to pass the necessary examina- 
tion ; and entered upon his college career (1745). 

How he lived, and what he learned, at Trinity College, are 
both largely matters of conjecture ; the chief features of such record 
as we have are the various means of raising a little money to which 
the poor sizar had to resort ; a continued quarrelling with his tutor, 
an ill-conditioned brute, who baited Goldsmith and occasionally 
beat him ; and a chance frolic when funds were forthcoming. It 
was while he was at Trinity College that his father died ; so that 
Goldsmith was rendered more than ever dependent on the kindness 
of his uncle Contarine, who throughout seems to have taken much 
interest in his odd ungainly nephew. A loan from a friend or a 
visit to the pawnbroker tided over the severer difficulties ; and then 
from time to time the writing of street-ballads, for which he got 
five shillings a-piece at a certain repository, came in to help. It 
was a happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth sort of existence, involving a 
good deal of hardship and humiliation, but having its frolics and 
gayeties notwithstanding. One of these was pretty near to putting 
an end to his collegiate career altogether. He had, smarting under 
a public admonition for having been concerned in a riot, taken se- 
riously to his studies and had competed for a scholarship. He 
missed the scholarship, but gained an exhibition of the value of 
thirty shillings ; whereupon he collected a number of friends of 
both sexes in his rooms, and proceeded to have high jinks there. 
In the midst of the dancing and uproar, in comes his tutor, in such 
a passion that he knock's Goldsmith down. This insult, received 
before his friends, was too much for the unlucky sizar, who, the 
very next day, sold his books, ran away from college, and ultimately, 
after having been on the verge of starvation once or twice, made 
his way to Lissoy. Here his brother got hold of him, persuaded 
him to go back, and the escapade was condoned somehow. Gold- 
smith remained at Trinity College until he took his degree (1749). 
He was again lowest in the list; but still he had passed; and he 
must have learned something. He was now twenty-one, with all 
the world before him ; and the question was as to how he was to 
employ such knowledge as he had acquired. 



14 



GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER III. 

IDLENESS AND FOREIGN TRAVEL. 

But Goldsmith was not in any hurry to acquire either wealth 
or fame. He had a happy knack of enjoying the present hour — 
especially when there were one or two boon companions with him, 
and a pack of cards to be found; and, after his return to his 
mother's house, he appears to have entered upon the business of 
idleness with much philosophical satisfaction. If he was not quite 
such an unlettered clown as he has described in Tony Lumpkin, 
he had at least all Tony Lumpkin's high spirits and love of joking 
and idling ; and he was surrounded at the ale-house by just such 
a company of admirers as used to meet at the famous Three 
Pigeons. Sometimes he helped in his brother's school; sometimes 
he went errands for his mother ; occasionally he would sit and 
meditatively play the flute — for the day was to be passed somehow; 
then in the evening came the assemblage in Conway's inn, with the 
glass, and the pipe, and the cards, and the uproarious jest or song. 
" But scripture saith an ending to all fine things must be," and the 
friends of this jovial young "buckeen "began to tire of his idleness 
and his recurrent visits. They gave him hints that he might set 
about doing something to provide himself with a living ; and the 
first thing they thought of was that he should go into the Church 
perhaps as a sort of purification-house after George Conway's inn. 
Accordingly Goldsmith, who appears to have been a most good- 
natured and compliant youth, did make application to the Bishop 
of Elphin. There is some doubt about the precise reasons which 
induced the Bishop to decline Goldsmith's application, but at any 
rate the Church was denied the aid of the young man's eloquence 
and erudition. Then he tried teaching, and through the good 
offices of his uncle he obtained a tutorship which he held for a con- 
siderable time — long enough, indeed, to enable him to amass a sum 
of thirty pounds. When he quarrelled with his patron, and once 
more "took the world for his pillow," as the Gaelic stories sa}', he 
had this sum in his pocket and was possessed of a good horse. 

He started away from Ballymahon, where his mother was now 
living, with some vague notion of making his fortune as casual 
circumstance might direct. The expedition came to a premature 
end ; and he returned without the money, and on the back of a 
wretched animal, telling his mother a cock-and-bull story of the 



GOLDSMITH. 15 

most amusing simplicity. " If Uncle Contarine believed those 
letters," says Mr. Thackeray, " if Oliver's mother believed that 
story wliich the youth related of his going to Cork, with the pur- 
pose of embarking for America ; of his having paid his passage- 
money, and having sent his kit on board ; of the anonymous captain 
sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage, in a nameless ship, 
never to return — if Uncle Contarine and the mother at Ballymahon 
believed his stories, they must have been a very simple pair ; as it 
was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them." Indeed, if any- 
one is anxious to fill up this hiatus in Goldsmith's life, the best thing 
he can do is to discard Goldsmith's suspicious record of his adven- 
tures, and put in its place the faithful record of the adventures of 
Mr. Barry Lyndon, when that modest youth left his mother's house 
and rode to Dublin, with a certain number of guineas in his pocket. 
But whether Uncle Contarine believed the story or no, he was 
ready to give the young gentleman another chance ; and this time 
ft was the legal profession that was chosen. Goldsmith got fifty 
pounds from his uncle, and reached Dublin. In a remarkably brief 
space of time he had gambled away the fifty pounds, and was on 
his way back to Ballymahon, where his mother's reception of him 
was not very cordial, though his uncle forgave him, and was once 
more ready to start him in life. But in what direction ? Teaching, 
the Church, and the law had lost their attractions for him. Well, 
this time it was medicine. In fact, any sort of project was capable 
of drawing forth the good old uncle's bounty. The funds were 
again forthcoming ; Goldsmith started for Edinburgh, and now 
(1752) saw Ireland for the last time. 

He hved, and he informed his uncle that he studied, in Edin- 
burgh for a year and a half ; at the end of which time it appeared 
to him that his knowledge of medicine would be much improved 
by foreign travel. There was Albinus, for example, "the great 
professor of Leyden," as he wrote to the credulous uncle, from 
whom he would doubtless learn much. When, having got another 
twenty pounds for travelling expenses, he did reach Leyden (1754), 
he mentioned Gaubius, the chemical professor. Gaubius is also a 
good name. That his intercourse with these learned persons, and 
the serious nature of his studies, were not incompatible with a little 
light relaxation in the way of gambling is not impossible. On one 
occasion, it is said, he was so lucky that he came to a fellow-stu 
dent with his pockets full of money ; and was induced to resolve 
never to play again — a resolution broken about as soon as made. 
Of course he lost all his winnings, and more ; and had to borrow 
a trifling sum to get himself out of the place. Then an incident 
occurs which is highly characteristic of the better side of Gold- 
smith's nature. He had just got this money, and was about to 
leave Leyden, when, as Mr. Forster writes, "he passed a florist's 
garden on his return, and seeing some rare and high-priced flower, 
which his uncle Contarine, an enthusiast in such things, had often 
spoken and been in search of, he ran in without another thought 
than of immediate pleasure to his kindest friend, bought a parcel 



l6 GOLDSMITH, 

of the roots, and sent them off to Ireland." He had a guinea in 
his pocket when he started on the grand tour. 

Of this notable period in Goldsmith's life (1755-6) very little 
is known, though a good deal has been guessed. A minute record 
of all the personal adventures that befell the wayfarer as he 
trudged from country to country, a diary of the odd humours and 
fancies that must have occurred to him in his solitary pilgrimages, 
would be of quite inestimable value ; but even the letters that 
Goldsmith wrote home from time to time are lost ; while The 
Traveller consists chiefly of a series of philosophical reflections 
on the government of various states, more likely to have engaged 
the attention of a Fleet-street author, living in an atmosphere of 
books, than to have occupied the mind of a tramp anxious about 
his supper and his night's lodging. Boswell says he " disputed " 
his way through Europe. It is much more probable that he begged 
his way through Europe. The romantic version, which has been 
made the subject of many a charming picture, is that he was enter- 
tained by the peasantry whom he had delighted with his playing on 
the flute. It is quite probable that Goldsmith, whose imagination had 
been captivated by the story of how Baron von Holberg had as a 
young man really passed through France, Germany, and Holland 
in this Orpheus-like manner, may have put a flute in his pocket 
when he left Leyden ; but it is far from safe to assume, as is gen- 
erally done, that Goldsmith was himself the hero of the adventures 
described in Chapter XX. of the Vicar of Wakefield. It is the 
more to be regretted that we have no authentic record of these 
devious wanderings, that by this time Goldsmith had acquired, as 
is shown in other letters, a polished, easy, and graceful style, with 
a very considerable faculty of humorous observation. Those in- 
genious letters to his uncle (they usually included a little hint 
about money) were, in fact, a trifle too hterary both in substance 
and in form ; we could even now, looking at them with a pardon- 
able curiosity, have spared a little of their formal antithesis for 
some more precise information about the writer and his sur- 
roundings. 

The strangest thing about this strange journey all over Europe 
was the failure of Goldsmith to pick up even a common and or- 
dinary acquaintance with the familiar facts of natural history. The 
ignorance on this point of the author of the A7iimated Nature was 
a constant subject of jest am.ong Goldsmith's friends. They 
declared he could not tell the difference between any two sorts of 
barn-door fowl until he saw them cooked and on the table. But it 
may be said permanently here that, even when he is wrong as to 
his facts or his sweeping generalisations, one is inclined to forgive 
him on account of the quaint gracefulness and point of his style. 
When Mr. Burchell says, " This rule seems to extend even to 
other animals : the little vermin race are ever treacherous, cruel, 
and cowardly, whilst those endowed with strength and power are 
generous, brave, and gentle," we scarcely stop to reflect that the 
merlin, which is not much bigger than a thrush, has an extraordi- 



GOLDSMITH. 17 

nary courage and spirit, while the lion, if all stories be true, is, 
unless when goaded by hunger, an abject skulker. Elsewhere, 
indeed, in the Anhnated Nature^ Goldsmith gives credit to the 
smaller birds for a good deal of valour, and then goes on to say, 
with a charming freedom, " But their contentions are sometimes of 
a gentler nature. Two male birds shall strive in song till, after a 
long struggle, the loudest shall entirely silence the other. During 
these contentions the female sits an attentive silent auditor, and 
often rewards the loudest songster with her company during the 
season." Yet even this description of the battle of the bards, 
with the queen of love as arbiter, is scarcely so amusing as his 
happy-go-lucky notions with regard to the variability of species. 
The philosopher, flute in hand, who went wandering from the 
canals of Holland to the ice-ribbed falls of the Rhine, may have 
heard from time to time that contest between singing-birds which 
he so imaginatively describes ; but it was clearly the Fleet-street 
author, living among books, who arrived at the conclusion that 
intermarriage of species is common among small birds and rare 
among big birds. Quoting some lines of Addison's which express 
the belief that birds are a virtuous race — that the nightingale, for 
example, does not covet the wife of his neighbour, the blackbird — 
Goldsmith goes on to observe, " But whatever may be the poet's 
opinion, the probability is against this fidelity among the smaller 
tenants of the grove. The great birds are much more true to 
their species than these ; and, of consequence, the varieties among 
them are more few. Of the ostrich, the cassowary, and the eagle, 
there are but few species ; and no arts that man can use could 
probably induce them to mix with each other." 

What he did bring back from his foreign travels was a medical 
degree. Where he got it, and how he got it, are alike matters of 
pure conjecture ; but it is extremely improbable that — whatever he 
might have been willing to write home from Padua or Louvain, in 
order to coax another remittance from his Irish friends — he would 
afterwards, in the presence of such men as J ihnson, Burke and 
Reynolds, wear sham honours. It is much more probable that, on 
his finding those supplies from Ireland running ominously short, 
the philosophic vagabond determined to prove to his correspond- 
ents that he was really at work somewhere, instead of merely idhng 
away his time, begging or borrowing the wherewithal to pass him 
from town to town. That he did see something of the foreign 
universities is evident from his own writings ; there are touches of 
description here and there which he could not well have got from 
books. With this degree, and with such book-learning and such 
knowledge of nature and human nature as he had chosen or man- 
aged to pick up during all those years, he was now called upon to 
begin life for himself. The Irish supplies stopped altogether. 
His letters were left unanswered. And so Goldsmith somehow or 
other got back to London (February i, 1756), and had to cast about 
for some way of earnins: his dailv bread. 



i8 GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER IV. 
EARLY STRUGGLES — HACK-WRITIQN. 

Here ensued a very dark period in his life. He was alone in 
London, without friends, without money, without introductions; 
his appearance was the reverse of prepossessing; and, even despite 
that medical degree and his acquaintance with the learned Albinus 
and the learned Gaubius, he had practically nothing of any value 
to offer for sale in the great labour-market of the world. How he 
managed to live at all is a mystery : it is certain that he must have 
ensured a great deal of want ; and one may well sympathise with 
so gentle and sensitive a creature reduced to such straits, without 
inquiring too curiously into the causes of his misfortunes. If, on 
the one hand, we cannot accuse society, or Christianity, or the 
English government of injustice or cruelty because Goldsmith had 
gambled away his chances and was now called on to pay the pen- 
alty, on the otlier hand, we had better, before blaming Goldsmith 
himself, inquire into the origin of those defects of character which 
produced such results. As this would involve an excursus into the 
controversy between Necessity and Free-will, probably most peo- 
ple would rather leave it alone. It may safely be said in any case 
Lthat, while Goldsmith's faults and follies, of which he himself had 
; to suffer the consequences, are patent enough, his character, on 
/ the whole, was distinctly a lovable one. Goldsmith was his own 
j enemy, and everybody else's friend : that is not a serious indict- 
\ ment, as things go. He was quite well aware of his weaknesses ; 
and he was also — it may be hinted — aware of the good-nature which 
he put forward as condonation. If some foreigner were to ask 
how it is that so thoroughly a commercial people as the English 
are — strict in the acknowledgment and payment of debt — should 
have always betrayed a sneaking fondness for the character of the 
good-humored scapegrace whose hand is in everybody's pocket, 
and who throws away other people's money with the most charm- 
ing air in the world, Goldsmith might be pointed to as one of many 
literary teachers whose own circumstances were not likely to make 
them severe censors of the Charles Surfaces, or lenient judges of 
the Joseph Surfaces of the world. Be merry while you may ; let 
to-morrow take care of itself ; share your last guinea with anyone, 
even if the poor drones of society — the butcher, and baker, and 
milkman with his score — have to suffer ; do anything you like, so 



GOLDSMITH. 



19 



long as you keep the heart warm. All this is a delightful phi- 
losophy. It has its moments of misery — its periods of reaction — 
but it has its moments of high delight. When we are invited to 
contemplate the " evil destinies of men of letters," we ought to be 
shown the flood-tides as well as the ebb-tides. The tavern gayety ; 
the brand-new coat and lace and sword ; the midnight frolics, with 
jolly companions every one — these, however brief and intermittent, 
should not be wholly left out of the picture. Of course it is very 
dreadful to hear of poor Boyse lying in bed with nothing but a 
blanket over him, and with his arms thrust through two holes in 
the blanket, so that he could write—perhaps a continuation of his 
poem on the Deity. But then we should be shown Boyse when he 
was spending the money collected by Dr. Johnson to get the poor 
scribbler's clothes out of pawn; and we should also be shown him, 
with his hands through the holes in the blanket, enjoying the mush- 
rooms and truffles on which, as a little garniture for " his last scrap 
of beef," he had just laid out his last half-guinea. 

There were but few truffles — probably there was but little beef 
— for Goldsmith during this sombre period. '• His threadbare 
coat, his uncouth figure, and Hibernian dialect caused him to meet 
with repeated refusals." But at length he got some employment 
in a chemist's shop, and this was a start. Then he tried practising 
in a small way on his own account in Southwark. Here he made 
the acquaintance of a printer's workman ; and through him he was 
engaged as corrector of the press in the establishment of Mr. Sam- 
uel Richardson. Being so near to literature, he caught the infec- 
tion; and naturally began with a tragedy. This tragedy was shown 
to the author of Clarissa Harlowe ; but it only went the way of 
many similar first inspiritings of the Muse- Then Goldsmith 
drifted to Peckham, where we find him (1757) installed as usher 
at Dr. Milner's school. Goldsmith as usher has been the object 
of much sympathy; and he would certainly deserve it, if we are to 
assume that his description of an usher's position in the Bee, and 
in George Primrose's advice to his cousin, was a full and accurate 
description of his life at Peckham. " Browbeat by the master, 
hated for my ugly face by the mistress, worried by the boys " — if 
that was his life, he was much to be pitied. But we cannot believe 
it. The Milners were exceedingly kind to Goldsmith. It was at 
the intercession of young Milner, who had been his fellow-student 
at Edinburgh, that Goldsmith got the situation, which at all events 
kept him out of the reach of immediate want. It was through the 
Milners that he was introduced to Griffiths, who gave him a chance 
of trying a literary career — as a hack-writer of reviews and so forth. 
When, having got tired of that. Goldsmith was again floating 
vaguely on the waves of chance, where did he find a harbour but in 
that very school at Peckham ? And we have the direct testimony 
of the youngest of Dr. Milner's daughters, that this Irish usher 
of theirs was a remarkably cheerful, and even facetious person, 
constantly playing tricks and practical jokes, amusing the boys by 
telling stories and by performances on the flute, living a careless 



20 GOLDSMITH. 

life, and always in advance of his salary. Any beggars, or group 
of children, even the very boys who played back "practical jokes 
on him, were welcome to a share of what small funds he had ; and 
we all know how Mrs. Milner good-naturedly said one day, " You 
had better, Mr. Goldsmith, let me keep your money for you, as I 
do for some of the young gentlemen ; " and how he answered with 
much simplicity, " In truth, Madam, there is equal need." With 
Goldsmith's love of approbation and extreme sensitiveness, he no 
doubt suffered deeply from many slights, now as at other times ; 
but what we know of his life in the Peckham school does not in- 
cline us to believe that it was an especially miserable period of his 
existence. His abundant cheerfulness does not seem to have at 
any time deserted him; and what with tricks, and jokes, and play- 
ing of the flute, the dull routine of instructing the unruly young 
gentlemen at Dr. Milner's was got through somehow. 

When Goldsmith left the Peckham school to try hack-writing 
in Paternoster Row, he was going further to fare worse. Griffiths 
the bookseller, when he met Goldsmith at Dr. Milner's dinner- 
table and invited him to become a reviewer, was doing a service to 
the English nation — for it was in this period of machine-work that 
Goldsmith discovered that happy faculty of literary expression that 
led to the composition of his masterpieces — but he was doing little 
immediate service to Goldsmith. 

The newly-captured hack was boarded and lodged at Griffiths' 
house in Paternoster Row (1757) ; he was to have a small salary in 
consideration of remorselessly constant work ; and — what was the 
hardest condition of all — he was to have his writings revised by 
Mrs. Griffiths. Mr. Forster justly remarks that though at last 
Goldsmith had thus become a man-of-letters, he "had gratified no 
passion and attained no object of ambition." He had taken to 
literature, as so many others have done, merely as a last resource. 
And if it is true that literature at first treated Goldsmith harshly, 
made him work hard, and gave him comparatively little for what he 
did, at least it must be said that his experience was not a singular 
one. Mr. Forster says that literature was at that time in a tran- 
sition state : " The jiatron was gone, and the public had not come." 
But when Goldsmith began to do better than hack-work, he found 
a public speedily enough. If, as Lord Macaulay computes, Gold- 
smith received in the last seven years of his life what was equivalent 
to ^5600 of our money, even the villain booksellers cannot be ac- 
cused of having starved him. At the outset of his literary career 
he received no large sums, for he had achieved no reputation ; but 
he got the market-rate for his work. We have around us at this 
moment plenty of hacks who do not ea^n much more than their 
board and lodging with a small salary. 

For the rest, \/e have no means of knowing whether Goldamith 
got through his work with ease or with difficulty ; but it is obvious, 
looking over the reviews which he is believed to have written for 
Griffiths' magazine, that he readily acquired the professional critic's 
airs of superiority, along with a few tricks of the trade, no doubt 



GOLDSMITH. 21 

taught him by Griffiths. Several of these reviews, for example, are 
merely epitomes of the contents of the books reviewed, with some 
vague suggestion that the writer might, if he had been less careful, 
have done worse, and, if he had been more careful, might have 
done better. Who does not remember how the philosophic vag- 
abond was taught to become a cognoscento? " The whole secret 
consisted in a strict adherence to two rules : the one always to ob- 
serve that the picture might have been better if the painter had 
taken more pains ; and the other to praise the works of Pietro 
Perugino." It is amusing to observe the different estimates formed 
of the function of criticism by Goldsmith the critic and by Gold- 
smith the author. Goldsmith, sitting at Griffiths' desk, naturally 
magnifies his office, and announces his opinion that " to direct our 
taste, and conduct the poet up to perfection, has ever been the 
true critic's province." But Goldsmith the author, when he comes 
to enquire into the existing state of PoHte Learning in Europe, 
finds in criticism not a help but a danger. It is " the natural de- 
stroyer of polite learning." And again, in the Citizen of the World, 
he exclaimed against the pretensions of the critic. " If any choose 
to be critics, it is but saying they are critics ; and from that time 
forward they become invested with full power and authority over 
every caitiff who aims at their instruction or entertainment." 

This at least may be said, that in these early essays contributed 
to t\\t Mojithly Review there is much more of Goldsmith the critic 
than of Goldsmith the author. They are somewhat laboured per- 
formances. They are almost devoid of the sly and delicate humour 
that afterwards marked Goldsmith's best prose work. We find 
throughout his trick of antithesis ; but here it is forced and formal, 
whereas afterwards he lent to this habit of writing the subtle sur- 
prise of epigram. They have the true manner of authority, never- 
theless. He says oiilom&^s Dotiglas: " Those parts of nature, 
and that rural simplicity with which the author was, perhaps, best 
acquainted, are not unhappily described ; and hence we are led to 
conjecture that a more universal knowledge of nature will probably 
increase his powers of description." If the author had written 
otherwise, he would have written differently ; had he known more, 
he would not have been so ignorant ; the tragedy is a tragedy, but 
why did not the author make it a comedy? — this sort of criticism 
has been heard of even in our own day. However, Goldsmith 
pounded away at his newly-found work, under the eye of the exact- 
ing bookseller and his learned wife. We find him dealing with 
Scandinavian (here called Celtic) mythology, though he does not 
adventure on much comment of his own; then he engages Smol- 
lett's History of Ettgla/id, but mostly in the way of extract ; anon 
we find him reviewing A Journal of EigJit Days'' fojirney, by 
Jonas Hanway, of whom Johnson said that he made some reputation 
by travelling abroad, and lost it all by travelling at home. Then 
again we find him writing a disquisition on Some Enquiries cofz- 
cernifig the First Inhabitants^ Language, Religion^ Learning, and 
Letters of Europe, by a Mr. Wise, who, along with his critic, 



22 GOLDSMITH. 

appears to have got into hopeless confusion in believing Basque 
and Armorican to be the remains of the same ancient language. 
The last phrase of a' note appended to this review by Goldsmith 
probably indicates his own humble estimate of his work at this 
time. " It is more our business," he says, " to exhibit the opinions 
of the learned than to controvert them." In fact, he was employed 
to boil down books for people who did not wish to spend more on 
literature than the price of a magazine. Though he was new to 
the trade, it is probable he did it as well as any other. 

At the end of five months. Goldsmith and Griffiths quarrelled 
and separated. Griffiths said Goldsmith was idle ; Goldsmith said 
Griffiths was impertinent ; probably the editorial supervision exer- 
cised by Mrs. Griffiths had something to do with the dire con- 
tention. From Paternoster Row Goldsmith removed to a garret in 
Fleet Street ; had his letters addressed to a coffee-house ; and ap- 
parently supported himself by further hack-work, his connection 
with Griffiths not being quite severed. Then he drifted back to 
Peckham again ; and was once more installed as usher, Dr. Milner 
being in especial want of an assistant at this time. Goldsmith's 
lingering about the gates of literature had not inspired him with 
any great ambition to enter the enchanted land. But at the same 
time he thought he saw in literature a means by which a little 
ready money might be made, in order to help him on to something 
more definite and substantial ; and this goal was now put before 
him by Dr. Milner, in the shape of a medical appointment on the 
Coromandel coast. It was in the hope of obtaining this appoint- 
ment that he set about composing that Enquiry into the Present 
State of Polite Lear7iing in Europe^ which is now interesting to us 
as the first of his more ambitious works. As the book grew under 
his hands, he began to cast about for subscribers ; and from the 
Fleet-street coffee-house — he had again left the Peckham school — 
he addressed to his friends and relatives a series of letters of the 
most charming humor, which might have drawn subscriptions from 
a millstone. To his brother-in-law, Mr. Hodson, he sent a glowing 
account of the great fortune in store for him on the Coromandel 
coast. " The salary is but trifling," he writes, " namely, ^loo per 
annum, but the other advantages, if a person be prudent, are con- 
siderable. The practice of the place, if I am rightly informed, 
generally amounts to not less than ^looo per annum, for which the 
appointed physician has an exclusive privilege. This, with the 
advantages resulting from trade, and the high interest which money 
bears, viz. £2.0 per cent, are the inducements which persuade me 
to undergo the fatigues of sea^ the dangers of war, and the still 
greater dangers of the climate; which induce me to leave a place 
where I am every day gaining friends and esteem, and where I 
might enjoy all the conveniences of life." 

The surprising part of this episode in Goldsmith's life is that he 
did really receive the appointment ; in fact, he was called upon to 
pay £\o for the appointnient-warrant. In this emergency he went 
to the proprietor of the Critical Review^ the rival of the ' Monthly ^ 



GOLDSMITH. 



23 



and obtained some money for certain anonymous work which need 
not be mentioned in detail here. He also moved into another 
garret, this time in Green-Arbour Court, Fleet Street, in a wilder- 
ness of slums. The Coromandel project, however, on which so 
many hopes had been built, fell through. No explanation of the 
collapse could be got from either Goldsmith himself or from Dr. 
Milner. Mr. Forster suggests that Goldsmith's inability to raise 
money for his outfit may have been made the excuse for transferring 
the appointrrient to another; and that is probable enough; but it is 
also probable that the need for such an excuse was based on the 
discovery that Goldsmith was not properly qualified for the post. 
And this seems the more likely, that Goldsmith immediately after- 
wards resolved to challenge examination at Surgeons' Hall. He 
undertook to write four articles for the Monthly Review j Griffiths 
became surety to a tailor for a fine suit of clothes; and thus equip- 
ped, Goldsmith presented himself at Surgeons' Hall. He only 
wanted to be passed as hospital mate ; but even that modest 
ambition was unfulfilled. He was found not qualified, and re- 
turned, with his fine clothes, to his Fleet-street den. He was now 
thirty years of age (1758) ; and had found no definite occupation in 
the world. 



24 GOLDSMITH, 



CHAPTER V. 

BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP — THE BEE. 

During the period that now ensued, and amid much quarrelling 
with Griffiths and hack-writing for the Critical Review^ Goldsmith 
managed to get his Enqui?y into the Present State of Polite 
Learning in Europe completed ; and it is from the publication of 
tliat work, on the 2d of April, 1759, that we may date the begin- 
ning of Goldsmith's career as an author. The book was published 
anonymously; but Goldsmith was not at all anxious to disclaim 
the parentage of his first-born ; and in Grub Street and its environs, 
at least, the authorship of the book was no secret. Moreover, 
there was that in it which was likely to provoke the literary tribe to 
plenty of fierce talking. The Enquiry is neither more nor less 
than an endeavour to prove that criticism has in all ages been the 
deadly enemy of art and literature ; coupled with an appeal to au- 
thors to draw their inspiration from nature rather than from books, 
and varied here and there by a gentle sigh over the loss of that 
patronage, in the sunshine of which men of genius were wont to 
bask. Goldsmith, not having been an author himself, could not 
have suffered much at the hands of the critics ; so that it is not to 
be supposed that personal feeling dictated this fierce onslaught on 
the whole tribe of critics, compilers, and commentators. They are 
represented to us as rank weeds growing up tp choke all manifest- 
ations of true art. " Ancient learning," we are told at the outset, 
" may be distinguished into three periods : its commencement, or 
the age of poets ; its maturity, or the age of philosophers : and its 
decline, or the age of critics," Then our guide carries us into the 
dark ages ; and, with lantern in hand, shows us the creatures 
swarming there in the sluggish pools — "commentators, compilers, 
polemic divines, and intricate metaphysicians." We come to Italy : 
look at the affectations with which the Virtuosi and Filosofi have 
enchained the free spirit of poetry. " Poetry is no longer among 
them an imitation of what we see, but of what a visionary might 
wish. The zephyr breathes the most exquisite perfume ; the trees 
wear eternal verdure ; fawns ; and dryads, and hamadryads, stand 
ready to fan the sultry shepherdess, who has forgot, indeed, the 
prettiness with which Guarini's shepherdesses have been re- 
proached, but is so simple and innocent as often to have no mean 



GOLDSMITH, 



25 



ing. Happy country, where the pastoral age begins to revive ! — 
where the wits even of Rome are united into a rural group of 
nymphs and swains, under the appellation of modern Arcadians ! 

where in the midst of porticoes, processions, and cavalcades, 

abbes turned shepherds and shepherdesses without sheep indulge 
their innocent diver timenti / ^^ 

In Germany the ponderous volumes of the commentators next 
come \n for animadversion; and here we find an epigram, the 
quaint simplicity of which is peculiarly characteristic of Goldsmith. 
" Were angels to write books," he remarks, " they never would 
write folios." But Germany gets credit for the money spent by 
her potentates on learned institutions ; and it is perhaps England 
that is delicately hinted at in these words : *' Had the fourth part 
of the immense sum above mentioned been given in proper rewards 
to genius, in some neighbouring countries, it would have rendered 
the name of the donor immortal, and added to the real interests 
of society." Indeed, when we come to England, we find that men 
of letters are in a bad way, owing to the prevalence of critics, the 
tyranny of booksellers, and the absence of patrons. " The author, 
when unpatronized by the great, has naturally recourse to the 
bookseller. There cannot perhaps be imagined a combination 
more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one to 
allow as little for writing, and of the other to write as much as 
possible. Accordingly, tedious compilations and periodical maga- 
zines are the result of their joint endeavours. In these circum- 
stances the author bids adieu to fame, writes for bread, and for 
that only. Imagination is seldom called in. He sits down to ad- 
dress the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy; and, as we 
are told of the Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep in her 
lap. His reputation never spreads in a wider circle than that of 
the trade, who generally value him, not for the fineness of his com 
positions, but the quantity he works off in a given time. 

"A long habit of writing for bread thus turns the ambition of 
every author at last into avarice. He finds that he has written 
many years, that the public are scarcely acquainted even with his 
name ; he despairs of applause, and turns to profit, which invites 
him. He finds that money procures all those advantages, that 
respect, and that ease which he vainly expected from fame. Thus 
the man who, under the protection of the great, might have done 
honour to humanity, when only patronized by the bookseller be- 
comes a thing little superior to the fellow who works at the 
press." 

Nor was he afraid to attack the critics of his own day, though 
he knew that the two Reviews for which he had recently been 
writing would have something to say about his own Enquiry. 
This is how he disposes of the CiHtical and the Mo7ithly : " We 
have two literary Reviews in London, with critical newspapers and 
magazines without number. The compilers of these resemble the 
commoners of Rome ; they are all for levelling property, not by 
increasing their own, but by diminishing that of others. The man 



26 GOLDSMITH, 

who has any good-nature in his disposition must, however, be 
somewhat displeased to see distinguished reputations often the 
sport of ignorance — to see, by one false pleasantry, the future 
peace of a worthy man's life disturbed, and this only because he 
has unsuccessfully attempted to instruct or amuse us. Though ill- 
nature is far from being wit, yet it is generally laughed at as such. 
The critic enjoys the triumph, and ascribes to his parts what is 
only due to his effrontery. I fire with indignation when I see per- 
sons wholly destitute of education and genius indent to the press, 
and thus turn book-makers, adding to the sin of criticism the sin 
of ignorance also ; whose trade is a bad one, and who are bad 
workmen in the trade." Indeed there was a good deal of random 
hitting in the Enquiry, which was sure to provoke resentment. 
Why, for example, should he have gone out of his way to insult 
the highly respectable class of people who excel in mathematical 
studies? "This seems a science," he observes, " to which the 
meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, ' All 
men might understand mathematics if they would." There was 
also in the first edition of the Enqimy a somewhat ungenerous 
attack on stage-managers, actors, actresses, and theatrical things in 
general ; but this was afterwards wisely excised. It is not to be 
wondered at that, on the whole, the Enqui7y should have been 
severely handled in certain quarters. Smollett, who reviewed it 
in the C7itical Review, appears to have kept his temper pretty well 
for a Scotchman ; but Kenrick, a hack employed by Grififitlis to 
maltreat the book in the Monthly Review, flourished his bludgeon 
in a brave manner. The coarse personalities and malevolent in- 
sinuations of this bully no doubt hurt Goldsmith considerably; but, 
as we look at them now, they are only remarkable for their dulness. 
If Griffiths had had another Goldsmith to reply to Goldsmith, the 
retort would have been better worth reading : one can imagine the 
playful sarcasm that would have been dealt out to this new writer, 
who, in the very act of protesting against criticism, proclaimed 
himself a critic. But Goldsmiths are not always to be had when 
wanted ; while Kenricks can be bought at any moment for a guinea 
or two a head. 

Goldsmith had not chosen literature as the occupation of his 
life ; he had only fallen back on it when other projects failed. 
But it is quite possible that now, as he began to take up some 
slight position as an author, the old ambition of distinguishing 
himself — which had flickered before his imagination from time to 
time — began to enter into his calculations along with the more 
pressing business of earning a livelihood. And he was soon to 
have an opportunity of appealing to a wider public than could have 
been expected for that erudite treatise on the arts of Europe. Mr. 
Wilkie, a bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard, proposed to start a 
weekly magazine, price threepence, to contain essays, short stories, 
letters on the topics of the day, and so forth, more or less after the 
manner of the Spectator. He asked Goldsmith to become sole con- 
tributor. Here, indeed, was a very good opening ; for, although 



GOLDSMITH. 



27 



there were many magazines in the field, the public had just then a 
fancy for literature i small doses ; while Goldsmith, in entering 
into the competition, would not be hampered by the dulness of 
collaborateurs. He closed with Wilkie's offer; and on the 6th of 
October, 1759, appeared the first number of the Bee. 

For us now there is a curious autobiographical interest in the 
opening sentences of the first number ; but surely even the public 
of the day must have imagined that the new writer who was now 
addressing them was not to be confounded with the common herd 
of magazine-hacks. What could be more delightful than this odd 
mixture of modesty, humour, and an anxious desire to please? — 
" There is not, perhaps, a more whimsically dismal figure in nature 
than a man of real modesty, who assumes an air of impudence — 
who, while his heart beats with anxiety, studies ease and affects 
good-humour. In this situation, however, a periodical writer often 
finds himself upon his first attempt to address the public in form. 
All his power of pleasing is damped by solicitude, and his cheerful- 
ness dashed with apprehension. Impressed with the terrors of the 
tribunal before which he is going to appear, his natural humour turns 
to pertness, and for real wit he is obliged to substitute vivacit}-. 
His first publication draws a crowd; they part dissatisfied; and 
the author, never more to be indulged with a favourable hearing, is 
left to condemn the indelicacy of his own address or their want of 
discernment. For my part, as I was never distinguished for ad- 
dress, and have often even blundered in making my bow, such 
bodings as these had like to have totally repressed my ambition. I 
was at a loss whether to give the pubhc specious promises, or give 
none ; whether to be merry or sad on this solemn occasion. If I 
should decline all merit, it was too probable the hasty reader might 
have taken me at my word. If, on the other hand, like labourers in 
the magazine trade, I had, with modest impudence, humbly pre- 
sumed to promise an epitome of all the good things that ever were 
said or written, this might have disgusted those readers I most de- 
sire to please. Had I been merry, I might have been censured as 
vastly low ; and had I been sorrowful, I might have been left to 
mourn in solitude and silence ; in short, whichever way I turned, 
nothing presented but prospects of terror, despair, chandlers' 
shops, and waste paper." 

And it is just possible that if Goldsmith had kept to the vein of 
familiar caiiserie^ the public might in time have been attracted by 
its quaintness. But no doubt Mr. Wilkie would have started 
aghast ; and so we find Goldsmith, as soon as his introductory bow 
is made, setting seriously about the magazine-making. Very soon, 
however, both Mr. Wilkie and his editor perceived that the public 
had not been taken by their venture. The chief cause of the fail- 
ure, as it appears to anyone who looks over the magazine now, 
would seem to be the lack of any definite purpose. There was no 
marked feature to arrest public attention, while many things were 
discarded on which the popularity of other periodicals had been 
based. There was no scandal to appeal to the key-hole and back- 



28 GOLDSMITH. 

door element in human nature ; there were no libeis and gross per- 
sonalities to delight the mean and envious ; there were no fine airs 
of fashion to charm milliners anxious to know how the great talked, 
and posed, and dressed ; and there was no solemn and pompous 
erudition to impress the minds of those serious and sensible people 
who buy literature as they buy butter — by its weight. At the be- 
ginning of No. IV. he admits that the new magazine has not been 
a success, and in doing so, returns to that vein of whimsical, per- 
sonal humour with which he had started : " Were I to measure the 
merit of my present undertaking by its success or the rapidity of 
its sale, I might be led to form conclusions by no means favourable 
to the pride of an author. Should I estimate my fame by its ex- 
tent, every newspaper and magazine would leave me far behind. 
Their fame is diffused in a very wide circle — that of some as far as 
Islington, and some yet farther still ; while mine, I sincerely be- 
lieve, has hardly travelled beyond the sound of Bow Bell ; and, 
while the works of others fly like unpinioned swans, I find my own 
move as heavily as a new.plucked goose. Still, however, I have as 
much pride as they who have ten times as many readers. It is 
impossible to repeat all the agreeable delusions in which a disap- 
pointed author is apt to find comfort. I conclude, that. what my 
reputation wants in extent is made up by solidity. Mmus jiivat 
gloj'ia lata quant magna. I have great satisfaction in considering 
the delicacy and discernment of those readers I have, and in as- 
cribing my want of popularity to the ignorance or inattention of 
those I have not. All the world may forsake an author, but vanity 
will never forsake him. Yet, notwithstanding so sincere a confes- 
sion, I was onde induced to show my indignation against the public 
by discontinuing my endeavours to please ; and was bravely resolved, 
like Raleigh, to vex them by burning my manuscript in a passion. 
Upon recollection, however, I considered what set or body of 
people would be displeased at my rashness. The sun, after so sad 
an accident, might shine next morning as bright as usual ; men 
might laugh and sing the next day and transact business as before, 
and not a single creature feel any regret but myself." 

Goldsmith was certainly more at home in this sort of writing 
than in gravely lecturing people against the vice of gambling ; in 
warning tradesmen how ill it became them to be seen at races ; in 
demonstrating that justice is a higher virtue than generosity ; and 
in proving that the avaricious are the true benefactors of society. 
But even as he confesses the failure of his new magazine, he seems 
determined to show tlie public what sort of writer this is, whom as 
yet they have not regarded too favourably. It is in No. IV. of the 
Bee that the famous City Night Piece occurs. No doubt that 
strange little fragment of description was the result of some sud- 
den and aimless fancy, striking the occupant of the lonely garret in 
the middle of the night. The present tense, which he seldom used 
— and the abuse of which is one of the detestable vices of modern 
literature — adds to the mysterious solemnity of the recital : 

" The clock has just struck two, the expiring taper rises and 



GOLDSMITH. 29 

sinks in the socket, the watchman forgets the hour in slumber, the 
laborious and the happy are at rest, and nothing wakes but medita- 
tion, guilt, revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the 
destroying bowl, the robber walks his midnight round, and the sui- 
cide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person. 

" Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity or 
the sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, 
where Vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past walked before 
me — where she kept up the pageant, and now, like a froward child, 
seems hushed with her own importunities. 

" What a gloom hangs all around ! The dying lamp feebly 
emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock 
or the distant watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is for- 
gotten ; an hour like this may well display the emptiness of human 
vanity. 

"There will come a time when this temporary solitude may be 
made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, 
and leave a desert in its room. 

" What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed in exist- 
ence, had their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded ; and, 
with short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality ! 
Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some ; the sorrowful 
traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others ; and, as he be- 
holds, he learns wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublu- 
nary possession. 

" ' Here,' he cries, ' stood their citadel, now grown over with 
weeds ; there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every 
noxious reptile ; temples and theatres stood here, now only an un- 
distinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and ava- 
rice first made them feeble. The rewards of the state were con- 
ferred on amusing, and not on useful, members of society. Their 
riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at first re- 
pulsed, returned again, conquered by perseverance, and at last 
swept the defendants into undistinguished destruction.' " 



30 GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PERSONAL TRAITS. 

The foregoing extracts will sufficiently show what were the 
chief characteristics of Goldsmith's writing at this time — the grace 
and ease of style, a gentle and sometimes pathetic thoughtfulness, 
and, above all, when he speaks in the first person, a delightful 
vein of humorous self-disclosure. Moreover, those qualities, if 
they were not immediately profitable to the bookseller, were be- 
ginning to gain for him the recognition of some of the well-known 
men of the day. Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore, had made 
his way to the miserable garret of the poor author. Smollett, 
whose novels Goldsmith preferred to his History, was anxious to 
secure his services as a contributor to the forthcoming British 
Magazine. Burke had spoken of the pleasure given him by Gold- 
smith's review of the Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the 
Sublime and Bea7ct if ul. But, to crown all, the great Cham him- 
self sought out this obscure author, who had on several occasions 
spoken with reverence and admiration of his works ; and so began 
what is perhaps the most interesting literary friendship on record. 
At what precise date Johnson first made Goldsmith's acquaintance 
is not known ; Mr. Forster is right in assuming that they had met 
before the supper in the Wine-Office Court, at which Mr. Percy was 
present. It is a thousand pities that Boswell had not by this time 
made his appearance in London. Johnson, Goldsmith, and all the 
rest of them are only ghosts until the pertinacious young laird of 
Auchinleck comes on the scene to give them colour, and life, and 
form. It is odd enough that the very first remarks of Goldsmith's 
which Boswell jotted down in his note-book should refer to John- 
son's systematic kindness towards the poor and wretched. " He 
had increased my admiration of the goodness of Johnson's heart 
by incidental remarks in the course of conversation, such as, when 
I mentioned Mr. Levett, whom he entertained under his roof, ' He 
is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough to Johnston ; ' 
and when I wondered that he was very kind to a man of whom I 
had heard a very bad character, ' He is now become miserable, and 
that insures the protection of Johnson.' " 

For the rest, Boswell was not well-disposed towards Goldsmith, 
whom he regarded with a jealousy equal to his admiration of John- 



GOLDSMITH. 31 

son ; but it is probable that his description of the personal appear- 
ance of the awkward and ungainly Irishman is in the main correct. 
And here also it may be said that Boswell's love of truth and ac- 
curacy compelled him to make this admission : " It has been 
generally circulated and beheved that he (Goldsmith) was a mere 
fool in conversation ; but, in truth, this has been greatly exagger- 
ated." On this exaggeration — seeing that the contributor to the 
British Magazine and the Public Ledger \N2iS now becoming better 
known among his fellow-authors — a word or two may fitly be said 
here. It pleased Goldsmith's contemporaries, who were not all of 
them celebrated for their ready wit, to regard him as a hopeless 
and incurable fool, who by some strange chance could produce 
literature, the merits of which he could not himself understand- 
To Horace Walpole we owe the phrase which describes Gold- 
smith as an " inspired idiot." Innumerable stories are told of 
Goldsmith's blunders ; of his forced attempts to shine in con- 
versation ; of poor Poll talking nonsense, when all the world was 
wondering at the beauty of his writing. In one case we are told 
he was content to admit, when dictated to, that this, and not that, 
was what he really had meant in a particular phrase. Now there 
can be no question that Goldsmith, conscious of his pitted face, his 
brogue, and his ungainly figure, was exceedingly nervous and 
sensitive in society, and was anxious, as such people mostly are, to 
cover his shyness by an appearence of ease, if not even of swagger; 
and there can be as little question that he occasionally did and 
said very awkward and blundering things. But our Japanese 
friend, whom we mentioned in our opening pages, looking through 
the record that is preserved to us of those, blunders which are sup- 
posed to be most conclusive as to this aspect of Goldsmith's 
character, would certainly stare. " Good heavens," he would cry, 
'• did men ever live who were so thick-headed as not to see the 
humour of this or that * blunder ; ' or were they so beset with the 
notion that Goldsmith was only a fool, that they must needs be 
blind ? " Take one well-known instance. He goes to France with 
Mrs. Horneck and her two daughters, the latter very handsome 
young ladies. At Lille the two girls and Goldsmith are standing 
at the window of the hotel, overlooking the square in which are 
some soldiers ; and naturally the beautiful young English-women 
attract some attention. Thereupon Goldsmith turns indignantly 
away, remarking that elsewhere he also has his admirers. Now 
what surgical instrument was needed to get this harmless little joke 
into any sane person's head ? Boswell m^y perhaps be pardoned 
for pretending to take the incident au sSrieuxj for as has just 
been said, in his profound adoration of Johnson, he was devoured 
by jealousy of Goldsmith ; but that any other mortal should have 
failed to see what was meant by this little bit of humorous flattery 
is almost incredible. No wonder that one of the sisters afterwards 
referring to this "playful jest," should have expressed her astonish- 
ment at finding it put down as a proof of Goldsmith's envious dis- 
position. But even after that disclaimer, we find Mr. Crqker, 



32 GOLDSMITH. 

as quoted by Mr. Forster, solemnly doubting " whether the vex- 
ation so seriously exhibited by Gbldsmith was real or assumed " ! 

Of course this is an extreme case ; but there are others very 
similar. "He affected," says Hawkings, "Johnson's style and 
manner of conversation, and when he had uttered, as he often would, 
a laboured sentence, so tumid as to be scarce intelligible, would ask 
if that was not truly Johnsonian ! " Is it not truly dismal to find 
such an utterance coming from a presumably reasonable human 
being ? It is not to be wondered at that Goldsmith grew shy — and 
in some cases had to ward off the acquaintance of certain of his 
neighbours as being too intrusive — if he ran the risk of having his 
odd and grave humours so densely mistranslated. The fact is this, 
that Goldsmith was possessed of a very subtle quality of humour, 
which is at all times rare, but which is perhaps more frequently to 
be found in Irishmen than among other folks. It consists in the 
satire of the pretence and pomposities of others by means of a sort 
of exaggerated and playful self-depreciation. It is a most delicate 
and most delightful form of humour ; but it is very apt to be miscon- 
strued by the dull. Who can doubt that Goldsmith was good na- 
turedly laughing at himself, his own plain face, his vanity, and his 
blunders, when he professed to be jealous of the admiration ex- 
cited by the Miss Hornecks ; when he gravely drew attention to 
the splendid colours of his coat ; or when he no less gravely in- 
formed a company of his friends that he had heard a very good 
story, but would not repeat it, because they would be sure to miss 
the point of it ? 

This vein of playful and sarcastic self-depreciation is continually 
cropping up in his essay-writing, as, for example, in the passage al- 
ready quoted from No. IV. of the Bee : " I conclude that what my 
reputation wants in extent is made up by its solidity. Mimes Juv at 
gloria lataquajn magna. I have great satisfaction in considering 
the delicacy and discernment of those readers I have, and in as- 
cribing my want of popularity to the ignorance or inattention of 
those I have not." But here, no doubt, he remembers that he is 
addressing the world at large, which contains many foolish persons ; 
and so, that the delicate raillery may not be mistaken, he imme- 
diately adds, " All the world may forsake an author, but vanity will 
never forsake him." That he expected a quicker apprehension on 
the part of his intimates and acquaintances, and that he was fre- 
quently disappointed, seems pretty clear from those very stories of 
his " blunders." We may reasonably suspect, at all events, that 
Goldsmith was not quite so much of a fool as he looked ; and it is 
far from improbable that •when the ungainly Irishman was ca,lled 
in to make sport for the Philistines — and there were a good many 
Philistines in those days, if all stories be true — and when they 
imagined they had put him out of countenance, he was really stand- 
ing aghast, and wondering how it could have pleased Providence 
to create such helpless stupidity. 



GO-LJ^SMJTH. {|9 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. — BEAU NASH. 

Meanwhile, to return to his literary work, the Citizen of the 
World had grown out of his contributions to the Public Ledger^ a 
daily newspaper started by Newbery, anotlier bookseller in St. Paul's 
Churchyard. Goldsmith was engaged to write for this paper two 
letters a week at a guinea a-piece ; and these letters were, after a 
short time (1760), written in the character of a Chinese who had 
come to study European civihzation. It may be noted that Gold- 
smith had in the Monthly Review^ in mentioning Voltaire's memoirs 
of French writers, quoted a passage about Montesquieu's Lettres 
Persanes as follows : "It is written in imitation of the SiatJiese 
Letters of Du Freny and of the Turkish Spy ; but it is an imitation 
which shows what the originals should have been. The success 
their works met with was, for the most part, owing to the foreign 
air of their performances ; the success of the Persian Letters arose 
from the delicacy of their satire. That satire which in the mouth 
of an Asiatic is poignant, would lose all its force when coming from 
an European." And it must certainly be said that the charm of the 
strictures of the Citizen of the IVorld lies wholly in their delicate 
satire, and not at all in any foreign air which the author may have 
tried to lend to these performances. The disguise is very apparent. 
In those garrulous, vivacious, whimsical, and sometimes serious 
papers, Lien Chi Altangi, writing to Fum Hoam in Pekin, does not 
so much describe the aspects of European civilization which would 
naturally surprise a Chinese, as he expresses the dissatisfaction 
of a European with certain phases of the civilization visible every- 
where around him. It is not a Chinaman, but a Fleet street author 
by profession, who resents the competition of noble amateurs 
whose works otherwise bitter pills enough — are gilded by their 
titles : " A nobleman has but to take a pen, ink, and paper, write 
away through three large volumes, and then sign his name to the 
title-page ; though the whole might have been before more disgust- 
ing than his own rent-roll, yet signing his name and title gives 
value to the deed, title being alone equivalent to taste, imagination, 
^nd genius. As soon as a piece, therefore, is published, the first 



34 



GOLDSMIT7T. 



questions are: Who is the author? Does he keep a coach? 
Where lies his estate ? What sort of a table does he keep ? If 
he happens to be poor and unqualified for such a scrutiny, he and 
his works sink into irremediable obscurity, and too late he finds, 
that having fed upon turtle is a more ready way to fame than hav- 
ing digested Tully. The poor devil against whom fashion has set 
its face vainly alleges that he has been bred in every part of Eu- 
rope where knowledge was to be sold ; that he has grown pale in 
the study of nature and himself. His works may please upon the 
perusal, but his pretensions to fame are entirely disregared. He 
is treated like a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much 
praised, because he lives by it ; while a gentleman performer, 
though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the audience into 
raptures. The fiddler, indeed, may in such a case console himself 
by thinking, that while the other goes off with all the praise, he 
runs away with all the money. But here the parallel drops ; for 
while the nobleman triumphs in unmerited applause, the author by 
profession steals off with — nothing." 

At the same time it must be allowed that the utterance of these 
strictures through the mouth of a Chinese admits of a certain 
naivete, which on occasions heightens the sarcasm. Lien Chi ac- 
companies the Man in Black to a theatre to see an English play. 
Here is part of the performance : '• I was going to second his re- 
marks when my attention was engrossed by a new object ; a man 
came in balancing a straw upon his nose, and the audience were 
clapping their hands in all the raptures of applause. ' To what pur- 
pose,' cried I, ' does this unmeaning figure make his appearance ? 
is he a part of the plot ? ' — ' Unmeaning do you call him ? ' rephed 
my friend in black ; ' this is one of the most important characters 
of the whole play ; nothing pleases the people more than seeing a 
straw balanced : there is a great deal of meaning in a straw ; there 
is something suited to every apprehension in the sight ; and a fel- 
low possessed of talents like these is sure of making his fortune.' 
The third act now b«gan with an actor who came to inform us that 
he was the villain of the play, and -intended to show strange 
things before all was over. He was joined by another who seemed 
as much disposed for mischief as he ; their intrigues continued 
through this whole division. ' If that be a villain,' said I, ' he must 
be a very stupid one to tell his secrets without being asked ; such 
soliloquies of late are never admitted in China.' The noise of 
clapping interrupted me once more ; a child six years old was 
learning to dance on the stage, which gave the ladies and man- 
darins infinite satisfaction. ' I am sorry,' said I, 'to see the pretty 
creature so early learning so bad a trade ; dancing being, I pre- 
sume, as contemptible here as in China.' — ' Quite the reverse,' in- 
terrupted my companion; 'dancing is a very reputable and genteel 
employment here ; men have a greater chance for encouragement 
from the merit of their heels than their heads. One who jumps 
up and flourishes his toes three times before he comes to the 
ground may have three hundred a year ; he who flourishes them 



GOLDSMITH, 



35 



four times gets four nundred ; but he who arrives at five is inestim- 
able, and may demand what salary he thinks proper. The female 
dancers, too, are valued for this sort of jumping and crossing ; and 
it is a cant word amongst them, that she deserves most who shows 
highest. But the fourth act is begun ; let us be attentive.' " 

The Man in Black here mentioned is one of the notable feat- 
ures of this series of papers. The mysterious person whose ac- 
quaintance the Chinaman made in Westminster Abbey, and who 
concealed such a wonderful goodness of heart under a rough and 
forbidding exterior, is a charming character indeed ; and it is im- 
possible to praise too highly the vein of subtle sarcasm in which he 
preaches worldly wisdom. But to assume that any part of his his- 
tory which he disclosed to the Chinaman was a piece of autobio- 
graphical writing on the part of Goldsmith, is a very hazardous 
thing. A writer of fiction must necessarily use such materials as 
have come within his own experience ; and Goldsmith's experience 
— or his use of those materials — was extremely limited : witness 
how often a pet fancy, like his remembrance of Johmiy Ai^in- 
strojig's Last Good Nighty is repeated. " That of these simple ele- 
ments," writes Professor Masson, in his Memoir of Goldsmith^ pre- 
fixed to an addition of his works, " he made so many charming 
combinations, really differing from each other, and all, though sug- 
gested by fact, yet hung so sweetly in an ideal air, proved what 
an artist he was, and was better than much that is commonly called 
invention. In short, if there is a sameness of effect in Goldsmith's 
writings, it is because they consist of poetry and truth, humour and 
pathos, from his own life, and the supply from such a life as his 
was not inexhaustible." 

The question of invention is easily disposed of. Any child can 
invent a world transcending human experience by the simple com- 
bination of ideas which are in themselves incongruous — a world 
in which the horses have each five feet, in which the grass is blue 
and the sky green, in which seas are balanced on the peaks of 
mountains. The result is unbelievable and worthless. But the 
writer of imaginative literature uses his own experiences and the 
experiences of others, so that his combination of ideas in them- 
selves compatible shall appear so natural and believable that the 
reader — although these incidents and characters never did actually 
exist — is as much interested in them as if they had existed. The 
mischief of it is that the reader sometimes thinks himself very 
clever, and, recognizing a little bit of the story as having happened 
to the author, jumps to the conclusion that such and such a passage 
is necessary autobiographical. Hence it is that Goldsmith has been 
hastily identified with the Philosophic Vagabond in the Vicar of 
Wakefield^ and with the Man in Black in the Citizen of the World. 
That he may have used certain experiences in the one, and that he 
may perhaps have given in the other a sort of fancy sketch of a , 
person suggested by some trait in his own character, is possible ''• 
enough; but further assertion of likeness is impossible. That the 
Man in Black had one of Goldsmith's little weaknesses is obvious 



26 GOLDSMITH. 

t 
enough : we find him just a trifle too conscious of his own kindli- 
ness and generosity. The Vicar of Wakefield himself is not with- 
out a spice of his amiable vanity. As for Goldsmith, every one must 
remember his reply to Griffiths' accusation: "No, sir, had I been 
a sharper, had I been possessed of less good-nature and native gen- 
erosity^ I might surely now have been in better circumstances." 

The Man in Black, in any case, is a delightful character. We 
detect the warm and generous nature even in his pretence of hav- 
ing acquired worldly ^yisdom : " I now therefore pursued a course 
of uninterrupted frugality, seldom wanted a dinner, and was con- 
sequently invited to twenty. I soon began to get the character of 
a saving hunks that had money, and insensibly grew into esteem. 
Neighbours have asked my advice in the disposal of their daugh- 
ters ; and I have always taken care not to give any. I have con- 
tracted a friendship with an alderman, only by observing, that if 
we take a farthing from a thousand pounds it will be a thousand 
pounds no longer. I have been invited to a pawnbroker's table, 
by pretending to hate gravy; and am now actually upon treaty of 
marriage with a rich widow, for only having observed that the 
bread was rising. If ever I am asked a question, whether I know 
it or not, instead of answering, I only smile and look wise. If a 
charity is proposed, I go about with the hat, but put nothing in 
myself. If a wretch solicits my pity, I observe that the world is 
filled with impostors, and take a certain method of not being de- 
ceived by never relieving. In short, I now find the truest way of 
finding esteem, even from the indigent, is to give away nothing, 
and thus have much in our power to give." This is a very clever 
piece of writing, whether it is in strict accordance with the charac- 
,ter of the Man in Black or not. But there is in these P7iblic Ledger 
/papers another sketch of character, which is not onlv consistent in 
itself, and in every way admirable, but is of still further interest to 
us when we remember that at this time the various personages in 
the Vicar of Wakefield were no doubt gradually assuming defi- 
nite form in Goldsmith's mind. It is in the figure of Mr. Tibbs, 
introduced apparently at haphazard, but at once taking possession 
of us by its quaint relief, that we find Goldsmith showing a firmer 
hand in character-drawing. With a few happy dramatic touches 
Mr. Tibbs starts into life; he speaks for himself; he becomes one 
of the people whom we know. And yet, with this concise and 
sharp portraiture of a human being, look at the graceful, almost 
garrulous, ease of the style : 

" Our pursuer soon came up and joined us with all the famili- 
arity of an old acquaintance. ' My dear Drybone,' cries he, shak- 
ing my friend's hand, ' where have you been hiding this half a cen- 
tury ? Positively I had fancied you were going to cultivate matri- 
mony and your estate in the country.' During the reply I had an 
opportunity of surveying the appearance of our new companion : 
his hat was pinched up with peculiar smartness ; his looks were 
pale, thin, and sharp ; round his neck he wore a broad black rib- 
and in his bosom a buckle studded with glass ; his coat was 



GOLDSMITH. 



37 



trimmed with tarnished twist ; he wore by his side a sword with a 
black hilt; and his stockings of silk, though newly washed, were 
grown yellow by long service, I was so much engaged with the 
peculiarity of his dress, that I attended only to the latter part of 
my friend's reply, in which he complimented Mr. Tibbs on the 
taste of his clothes and the bloom in his countenance. ' Pshaw, 
pshaw. Will,' cried the figure, 'no more of that, if you love me : 
you know I hate flattery — on my soul I do ; and yet, to be sure, an 
intimacy with the great will improve one's appearance, and a course 
of venison will fatten ; and yet, faith, I despise the great as much 
as you do ; but there are a great many damn'd honest fellows 
among them, and we must not quarrel with one half because the 
other wants weeding. If they were all such as my Lord Mudler, 
one of the most good-natured creatures that ever squeezed a 
lemon, I should myself be among the number of their admirefs. 
I was yesterday to dine at the Duchess of Piccadilly's. My lord 
was there. "Ned," says he to me, " Ned," says he, " Pll hold 
gold to silver, I can tell you where you were poaching last night." 
" Poaching, my lord ? " says I ; "faith, you have missed already ; 
for I stayed at home and let the girls poach for me. That's my 
way: I take a fine woman as some animals do their prey — stand 
still, and, swoop, they fall into my mouth." ' ' Ah, Tibbs, thou art 
a happy fellow,' cried my companion, with looks of infinite pity ; 
' I hope your fortune is as much improved as your understanding, 
in such company?' 'Improved!' replied the other; 'you shall 
know — but let it go no farther — a great secret — five hundred a 
year to begin with — my lord's word of honour for it. His lordship 
took me down in his own chariot yesterday, and we had a tete-a- 
tete dinner in the country, where we talked of nothing else.' ' I 
fancy you forget, sir,' cried I ; 'you told us but this moment of 
your dining yesterday in town.' ' Did I say so ? ' replied he, coolly ; 
' to be sure, if I said so, it was so. Dined in town ! egad, now I 
do remember, I did dine in town ; but I dined in the country too ; 
for you must know, my boys, I ate two dinners. By the bye, I am 
grown as nice as the devil in my eating. I'll tell you a pleasant 
affair about that : we were a select party of us to dine at Lady 
Grogram's — an affected piece, but let it go no farther — a secret. 
Well, there happened to be no assafcetida in the sauce to a turkey, 
upon which, says I, I'll hold a thousand guineas, and say done, 
first, that — But, dear Drybone, you are an honest creature ; lend 

me half-a-crown for a minute or two, or so, just till ■ ; but 

hearkee, ask me for it the next time we meet, or it may be twenty 
to one but I forget to pay you.' " 

Returning from these performances to the author of them, we 
find him a busy man of letters, becoming more and more in request 
among the booksellers, and obtaining recognition among his fellow- 
writers. He had moved into better lodgings in Wine-Ofiice Court 
(1760-2); and it was here that he entertained at supper, as has 
already been mentioned, no less distinguished guests than Bishop, 
then Mr., Percy, and Dr., then Mr., Johnson. Every one has 



38 GOLDSMITH. 

heard of the surprise of Percy, on calling for Johnson, to find the 
great Cham dressed with quite unusual smartness. On asking the 
cause of this "singular transformation," Johnson replied, "Why, 
sir, I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very great sloven, justifies his 
disregard of cleanliness and decency by quoting my practice ; and 
I am desirous this night to show him a better example." That 
Goldsmith profited by this example — though the tailors did not — 
is clear enough. At times, indeed, he blossomed out into the 
splendours of a dandy ; and laughed at himself for doing so. But 
whether he was in gorgeous or in mean attire, he remained the 
same sort of happy-go-lucky creature ; working hard by fits and 
starts ; continually getting money in advance from the booksellers ; 
enjoying the present hour; and apparently happy enough when not 
pressed by debt. That he should have been thus pressed was no 
necessity of the case ; at all events we need not on this score begin 
now to abuse the booksellers or the public of that day. We may 
dismiss once for all the oft-repeated charges of ingratitude and 
neglect. 

When Goldsmirhwas writing those letters in the Public Ledger — 
with *• pleasure and instruction for others, ' Mr. Forster says, 
" though at the cost of suffering to himself " he was receiving for 
them alone what would be equivalent in our day to ;^2oo a year. 
No man can affirm that ^200 a year is not amply sufficient for all 
the material wants of life. Of course there are fine things in the world 
that that amount of annual v/age cannot purchase. It is a fine thing 
to sit on the deck of a j-acht on a summer's day, and watch the far 
islands shining over the blue ; it is a fine thing to drive four-in-hand 
to Ascot — if you can do it ; it is a fine thing to cower breathless 
behind a rock and find a splendid stag coming slowly within sure 
range. But these things are not necessary to human happiness: it 
is possible to do without them and yet not '• suffer."' Kven if Gold- 
smith had given all of his substance away to the poor, there was 
enough left to cover all the necessary wants of a human being ; and 
if he chose so to order his affairs as to incur the suffering of debt, 
why that was his own business, about which nothing further needs 
be said. It is to be suspected, indeed, that he did not care to 
practise those excellent maxims of prudence and frugality which 
he frequently preached ; but the world is not much concerned 
about that now. If Goldsmith had received ten times as much 
money as the booksellers gave him, he would still have died in 
debt. And it is just possible that we may exaggerate Goldsmith's 
sensitiveness on this score. He had had a life-long familiarity 
with duns and borrowing; and seemed very contented when the 
exigency of the hour was tided over. An angry landlady is un- 
pleasant, and an arrest is awkward ; but in comes an opportune 
guinea, and the bottle of Madeira is opened forthwith. 

In these rooms in Wine-Office Court, and at the suggestion or 
entreaty of Newbery, Goldsmith produced a good deal of miscel- 
laneous writing — pamphlets, tracts, compilations, and what not — 
of a more or less marketable kind. It can only be surmised that 



GOLDSMITH. 



39 



by this time he may have formed some idea of producing a book 
not solely meant for the market, and that the characters in the 
Vicar of Wakefield ^^XQ. already engaging his attention; but the 
surmise becomes probable enough when we remember that his 
project of writing the Traveller, which was not published till 1764, 
had been formed as far back as 1755, while he was wandering aim- 
lessly about Europe, and that a sketch of the poem was actually 
forwarded by him then to his brother Henry in Ireland. But in 
the meantime this hack-work, and the habits of life connected with 
it, began to tell on Goldsmith's health ; and so, for a time, he left 
London (1762), and went to Tunbridge, and then to Bath. It is 
scarcely possible that his modest fame had preceded him to the 
latter place of fashion ; but it may be that the distinguished folk of 
the town received this friend of the great Dr. Johnson with some 
small measure of distinction ; for we find that his next published 
work, The Life of Richard Nash, Esq., is respectfully dedicated 
to the Right Worshipful the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, and 
Common Council of the City of Bath. The Life of the recently 
deceased Master of Ceremonies was published anonymously (1762) ; 
but it was generally understood to be Goldsmith's ; and indeed the 
secret of the authorship is revealed in every successive line. Among 
the minor writings of Goldsmith there is none more delightful than 
this : the mock-heroic gravity, the half-familiar contemptuous good- 
nature with which he composes this Funeral March of a Marion- 
ette, are extremely whimsical and amusing. And then what an ad- 
mirable picture we get of fashionable English society in the begin- 
ning of the eighteenth century, when Bath and Nash were ahke in 
the heyday of their glory — the fine ladies with their snuff-boxes, 
and their passion for play, and their extremely effective language 
when they got angry ; young bucks come to flourish away their 
money, and gain by their losses the sympathy of the fair; sharpers 
on the lookout for guineas, and adventurers on the lookout for 
weak-minded heiresses; duchesses writing letters in the most 
doubtful English, and chairmen swearing at any one who dared to 
walk home on foot at night. 

No doubt the Life of Beau Nash was a bookseller's book ; and 
it was made as attractive as possible by the recapitulation of all 

sorts of romantic stories about Miss S n, and Mr. C e, and 

Captain K g ; but throughout we find the historian very much 

inclined to laugh at his hero, and only refraining now and again in 
order to record in serious language traits indicative of the real 
goodness of disposition of that fop and gambler. And the fine 
ladies and gentlemen, who lived in that atmosphere of scandal, and 
intrigue, and gambling, are also from time to time treated to a little 
decorous and respectful raillery. Who does not remember the 
famous laws of polite breeding written out by Mr. Nash — GoL' _„.h 
hints that neither Mr. Nash nor his fair correspondent at Blenheim, 
the Duchess of Marlborough, excelled in English composition — 
for the guidance of the ladies and gentlemen who were under the 
sway of the King of Bath ? " But were we to give laws to a nursery, 



40 GOLDSMITH. 

we should make them childish laws," Goldsmith writes gravely. 
" His statutes, though stupid, were addressed to fine gentlemen 
and ladies, and were probably received with sympathetic approba- 
tion. It is certain they were in general religiously observed by his 
subjects, and executed by him with impartiality; neither rank nor 
fortune shielded the refractory from his resentment." Nash, how- 
ever, was not content with prose in enforcing good manners. Hav- 
ing waged deadly war against the custom of wearing boots, and 
having found his ordinary armoury of no avail against the obstinacy 
of the country squires, he assailed them in the impassioned language 
of poetry, and produced the following " Invitation to the Assem- 
bly," which, as Goldsmith remarks, was highly relished by the. 
nol^ility at Bath on account of its keenness, severity, and partic 
ularly its good rhymes. 

" Come, one and all, to Hoyden Hall, 
For there's the assembly this night 

None but prude fools 

Mind manners and rules ; 
We Hoydens do decency slight. 

Come, trollops and slatterns, 

Cocked hats and white aprons, 
This best our modesty suits ; 

For why should not we 

In dress be as free 
As Hogs-Norton squires in boots ? " 

The sarcasm was too much for the squires, who yielded in a body; 
and when any stranger through inadvertence presented himself in 
the assembly-rooms in boots, Nash was so completely master of the 
situation that he would politely step up to the intruder and suggest 
that he had forgotten his horse. 

Goldsmith does not magnify the intellectual capacity of his 
hero ; but he gives him credit for a sort of rude wit that was some- 
times effective enough. His physician, for example, having called 
on him to see whether he had followed a prescription that had been 
sent him the previous day, was greeted in this fashion: " Followed 
your prescription ? No. Egad, if I had, I should have broken my 
neck, for I flung it out of the two pair of stairs window." For the 
rest, this diverting biography contains some excellent warnings 
against the vice of gambling; with a particular account of the man- 
ner in which the Government of the day tried by statute after 
statute to suppress the tables at Tunbridge and Bath, thereby only 
driving the sharpers to new subterfuges. That the Beau was in 
alhance with sharpers, or, at least, that he was a sleeping partner 
in the firm, his biographer admits ; but it is urged on his behal' 
that he was the most generous of winners, and again and again in- 
terfe. „a to prevent the ruin of some gambler by whose folly he 
would himself have profited. His constant charity was well known ; 
the money so lightly come by was at the disposal of any one who 



GOLDSMITH. 41 

could prefer a piteous tale. Moreover he made no scruple about 
exacting from others that charity which they could well afford. 
One may easily guess who was the duchess mentioned in the fol- 
lowing story of Goldsmith's narration : 

"The sums he gave and collected for the Hospital were great, 
and his manner of doing it was no less admirable. I am told that 
he was once collecting money in Wiltshire's room for that purpose, 
when a lady entered, who is more remarkable for her wit than her 
charity, and not being able to pass him by unobserved, she gave 
him a pat with her fan, and said, ' You must put down a trifle for 
me, Nash, for I have no money in my pocket.' ' Yes, madam,' 
says he, ' that I will with pleasure, if your grace will tell me when 
to stop; ' then taking an handful of guineas out of his pocket, he 
began to tell them "into his white hat — 'One, two, three, four, 

five ' 'Hold, hold !' says the duchess, 'consider what you 

are about.' ' Consider your rank and fortune, madam,' says Nash, 
and continues telling — ' six, seven, eight, nine, ten.' Here the 
duchess called again, and seemed angry. 'Pray compose yourself, 
madam,' cried Nash, 'and don't interrupt the work of charity — 
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.' Here the duchess 
stormed, and caught hold of his hand. 'Peace, madam,' says 
Nash, 'you shall have your name written in letters of gold, madam, 
and upon the front of the building, madam — sixteen, seventeen, 
eighteen, nineteen, twenty.' ' I won't pay a farthing more,' says 
the duchess. ' Charity hides a multitude of sins,' replies Nash — 
'twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.' 
' Nash,' says she, ' I protest you frighten me out of my wits. L — d, 
I shall die ! ' ' Madam, you will never die with doing good ; and if 
you do, it will be the better for you,' answered Nash, and was about 
to proceed ; but perceiving her grace had lost all patience, a parley 
ensued, when he, after much altercation, agreed to stop his ha. \ 
and compound with her grace for thirty guineas. The duchess 
however, seemed displeased the whole evening, and when he came 
to the table where she was playing, bid him, ' Stand farther, an 
ugly devil, for she hated the sight of him.' But her grace after- 
wards having a run of good luck called Nash to her. ' Come,' says 
she, " I will be friends with you, though you are a fool ; and to let 
you see I am not angry, there is ten guineas more for your charity. 
But this I insist on, that neither my name nor the sum shall be 
mentioned.' " 

At the ripe age of eighty-seven the " beau of three generations " 
breathed his last (1761); and, though he had fallen into poor ways, 
there were those alive who remembered his former greatness, and 
who chronicled it in a series of epitaphs and poetical lamentations. 
" One thing is common almost with all of them," says Goldsmith, 
"and that is that Venus, Cupid, and the Graces are commanded to 
weep, and that Bath shall never find such another." These 
effusions are forgotten now ; and so would Beau Nash be also but 
for this biography, which, no doubt meant merely for the book- 
market of the day, lives and is of permanent value by reason of the 



42 GOLDSMITH. 

charm of its style, its pervading humour, and the vivacity of its 
descriptions of the fashionable follies of the eighteenth century. 
Nullum fere genus sc7'ibeiidi non tetigit. Nulhini quod tetigit noti 
ortiavit. Who but Goldsmith could have written so delightful a 
book about such a poor creature as Beau Nash ? 



GOLDSMITH. 4, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ARREST. 

It was no doubt owing to Newbery that Goldsmith, after his 
return to London, was induced to abandon, temporarily or altogether, 
his apartments in Wine-Office Court, and take lodgings in the house 
of a Mrs. Fleming, who lived somewhere or other in Islington. 
Newbery had rooms in Canonbury House, a curious old building 
that still exists; and it may have occurred to the publisher that 
Goldsmith, in this suburban district, would not only be nearer him 
for consultation and so forth, but also might pay more attention to 
his duties than when he was among the temptations of Fleet Street. 
Goldsmith was working industriously in the service of Newbery at 
this time (1763-4); in fact, so completely was the bookseller in 
possession of the hack, that Goldsmith's board and lodging in Mrs. 
Fleming's house, arranged for at £z^o a year, was paid by Newbery 
himself. Writing prefaces, revising new editions, contributing 
reviews — this was the sort of work he undertook, with more or less 
content, as the equivalent of the modest sums Mr. Newbery dis- 
bursed for him or handed over as pocket-money. In the midst of 
all this drudgery he was now secretly engaged on work that aimed 
at something higher that mere payment of bed and board. The 
smooth lines of the Traveller were receiving further polish ; the 
gentle-natured Vicar was writing his simple, quaint, tender story. 
And no doubt Goldsmith was spurred to try something better than 
hack-work by the associations that he was now forming, chiefly 
under the wise and benevolent friendship of Johnson. 

Anxious always to be thought well of, he was now beginning to 
meet people whose approval was worthy of being sought. He had 
been introduced to Reynolds. He had become the friend of Ho- 
garth. He had even made the acquaintance of Mr. Boswell, from 
Scotland. Moreover, he had been invited to become one of the 
originals members of the famous Club of which so much has been 
written ; his fellow-members being Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, 
Hawkins, Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, and Dr. Nugent. It is al- 
most certain that it was at Johnson's instigation that he had been 
admitted into this choice fellowship. Long before either the TraV' 
eller or the Vicar had been heard of, Johnson had perceived the 
literary genius that obscurely burned in the uncouth figure of this 



44 GOLDSMITH. 

Irishman, and was anxious to impress on others Goldsmith's claims 
to respect and consideration. In the minute record kept by Bos- 
well of his first evening with Johnson at the Mitre Tavern, we find 
Johnson saying, " Dr. Goldsmith is one of the first men we now 
have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He has been 
loose in his principles, but he is coming right." Johnson took walks 
with Goldsmith ; did him the honour of disputing with him on all 
occasions; bought a copy of the Life of A^ash when it appeared — 
an unusual compliment for one author to pay another, in their day 
or in ours ; allowed him to call on Miss Williams, the bhnd old 
lady in Bolt Court; and generally was his friend, counsellor, and 
champion. Accordingly, when Mr. Boswell entertained the great 
Cham to supper at the Mitre — a sudden quarrel with his landlord 
having made it impossible for him to order the banquet at his own 
house — he was careful to have Dr. Goldsmith of the company. 
His guests that evening were Johnson, Goldsmith, Davies (the 
actor and bookseller who had conferred on Boswell the invaluable 
favor of an introduction to Johnson), Mr. Eccles, and the Rev. Mr. 
Ogilvie, a Scotch poet who deserves our gratitude because it was 
his inopportune patriotism that provoked, on this very evening, 
the memorable epigram about the high-road leading to England. 
" Goldsmith," says Boswell, who had not got over his envy at 
Goldsmith's being allowed to visit the blind old pensioner in Bolt 
Court, " as usual, endeavoured with too much eagerness to shine, 
and disputed very warmly with Johnson against the well-known 
maxim of the British constitution, ' The king can do no wrong.' " It 
was a dispute not so much about facts as about phraseology ; and, 
indeed, there seems to be no great warmth in the expressions used 
on either side. Goldsmith affirmed that " what was morally false 
could not be politically true ; " and that, in short, the king could by 
the misuse of his regal power do wrong. Johnson replied, that, in 
such a case, the immediate agents of the king were the persons to 
be tried and punished for the offence. " The king, though he 
should command, cannot force a judge to condemn a man unjustly ; 
therefore it is the judge whom we prosecute and punish." But 
when he stated that the king " is above every thing, and there is 
no power by which he can be tried," he was surely forgetting an 
important chapter in English history. " What did Cromwell do 
for his country ?" he himself asked, during his subsequent visit to 
Scotland, of old Auchinleck, Boswell's father. " God, Doctor," 
replied the vile Whig, " he garred kings ken they had a lith in their 
necks.' 

For some time after this evening Goldsmith drops out of Bos- 
well's famous memoir ; perhaps the compiler was not anxious to 
^ive him too much prominence. They had not liked each other 
from the outset. Boswell, vexed by the greater intimacy of Gold- 
smith with Johnson, called him a blunderer, a feather-brained per- 
son, and described his appearance in no flattering terms. Gold- 
smith, on the other hand, on being asked who was this Scotch cur 
that followed Johnson's heels, answered. " He is not a cur : you 



GOLDSMITH. ^e 

are too severe — he is only a bur. Tom Davis flung him at John- 
son in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." Boswell would 
probably have been more tolerant of Goldsmith as a rival, if he 
could have known that on a future day he was to have Johnson all 
to himself— to carry him to remote wilds and exhibit him as a por- 
tentous literary phenomenon to Highland lairds. It is true that 
Johnson, at an early period of his acquaintance with Boswell, did 
talk vaguely about a trip to the Hebrides ; but the young Scotch 
idolater thought it was all too good to be true. The mention of 
Sir James Macdonald, says Boswell, " led us to talk of the West- 
ern Islands of Scotland, to visit which he expressed a wish that 
then appeared to me a very romantic fancy, whicli I little thought 
would be afterwards realized. He told me that his father had put 
Martin's account of those islands into his hands when he was 
very young, and that he was highly pleased with it ; that he was 
particularly struck witli the St. Kilda man's notion that the High 
Church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock; a circum- 
stance to which old Mr. Johnson had directed his attention. Unfor- 
tunately Goldsmith not only disappears from the pages of Boswell's 
biography at this time, but also in great measure from the ken of 
his companions. He was deeply in debt; no doubt the fine clothes 
he had been ordering from Mr. Pllby in order that he might " shine " 
among those notable persons, had something to do with it; he 
had tried the patience of the booksellers : and he had been devot- 
ing a jTOod deal of time to work not intended to elicit immediate 
payment. The most patient endeavors to trace out his changes of 
lodgings, and the fugitive writings that kept him in daily bread, 
have not been very successful. It is to be presumed that Gold- 
smith had occasionally to go into hiding to escape from his credi- 
tors, and so was missed from his familiar haunts. We only reach 
daylight again, to find Goldsmith being under threat of arrest from 
his landlady ; and for the particulars of this famous affair it is 
necessary to return to Boswell. 

Boswell was not in London at that time ; but his account was 
taken down subsequently from Johnson's narration; and his accu- 
racy in other matters, his extraordinary memory, and scrupulous 
care, leave no doubt in the mind that his version of the story is to 
be preferred to those of Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins. We 
may take it that these are Johnson's own words : " I received one 
morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great dis- 
tress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that 
I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, 
and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon 
as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for 
his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that 
he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira 
and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he 
would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he 
might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for 
the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its 



46 GOLDSMITH. 

merit ; told the landlady I should soon return ; and, having gone 
to a bookseller, sold it for ^60. I brought Goldsmith the money 
and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a 
high tone for having used him so ill." 

We do not know who this landlady was— it cannot now be made 
out whether the incident occurred at Islington, or in the rooms 
that Goldsmith partially occupied in the Temple ; but even if Mrs 
Fleming be the landlady in question, she was deserving neither of 
Goldsmith's rating nor of the reprimands that have been bestowed 
upon her by later writers. Mrs. Fleming had been exceedincrly 
kmd to Goldsmith. Again and again in her bills we find items 
significantly marked ^o os. od. And if her accounts with her 
lodger did get hopelessly into arrear ; and if she was annoved by 
seeing him go out in fine clothes to sup at the Mitre; and if at 
length, her patience gave way, and she determined to have her 
rights in one way or another, she was no worse than landladies— 
who are only human beings, and not divinely appointed protect- 
resses of genius— ordinarily are. Mrs. Piozzi savs that when 
Johnson came back with the money, Goldsmith "called the woman 
of the house directly to partake of punch, and pass their time in 
merriment." This would be a dramatic touch ; but, after Johnson's 
quietly corking the bottle of Madeira, it is more likely that no such 
thing occurred ; especially as Boswell quotes the statement as an 
'• extreme inaccuracy." 

The novel which Johnson had taken away and sold to Francis 
Newbery, a nephew of the elder bookseller, was, as every one 
knows, the Vicar of Wakefield. That Goldsmith, amidst all his 
pecuniary distresses, should have retained this piece in his desk, 
instead of pawning or promising it to one of his bookselling 
patrons, points to but one conclusion — that he was building high 
hopes on it, and was determined to make it as good as lay 
within his power. Goldsmith put an anxious finish into all his 
better work; perhaps that is the secret of the graceful ease that 
is now apparent in every line. Any young writer who may imagine 
that the power of clear and concise literary expression comes by 
nature, cannot do better than study, in Mr. Cunningham's big col- 
lection of Goldsmith's writings, the continual and minute altera- 
tions which the author considered necessarv even after the first 
edition — sometimes when the second and third editions — had been 
published. Many of these, especially in the poetical works, were 
merely improvements in sound as suggested by a singularly sensi- 
tive ear, as when he altered the line 

"Amidst the ruin, heedless of the dead," 

which had appeared in the first three editions of the Traveller, 
into 

" There in the ruin, heedless of the dead," 
which appeared in the fourth. But the majority of the omissions 



GOLDSMITH. 



47 



and corrections were prompted by a careful taste, that abhorred 
everything redundant or slovenly. It has been suggested that 
when Johnson carried off the Vicar of Wakefield to Francis New- 
bery, the manuscript was not quite finished, but had to be com- 
pleted afterwards. There was at least plenty of time for that. 
Newbery does not appear to have imagined that he had obtained 
a prize in the lottery of literature. He paid the ^60 for it — clearly 
on the assurance of the great father of learning of the day, that 
there was merit in the little story — somewhere about the end of 
1764; but the tale was not issued to the public until March, 1766. 
" And, sir," remarked Johnson to Boswell, with regard to the sixty 
pounds, "a sufficient price, too, when it was sold; for then the 
fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was, by 
his Traveller; and the bookseller had such faint hopes of profit 
by his bargain, that he kept the manuscript by him a long time, 
and did not publish it till after the Traveller had appeared. Then, 
to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money." 



48 GOLDSMITH. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE TRAVELLER. 

This poem of the Traveller^ the fruit of much secret labour and 
the consummation of the hopes of many years, was lying completed 
in Goldsmith's desk when the incident of the arrest occurred ; atid 
the elder Newbery had undertaken to publish it. Then, as at 
other times, Johnson lent this wayward child of genius a friendly 
hand. He read over the proof-sheets for Goldsmith; was so kind 
as to put in a line here or there where he thought fit ; and prepared 
a notice of the poem for the Critical Review. The time for the 
appearance of this new claimant for poetical honours was propitious. 
"There was perhaps no point in the century," says Professor Mas- 
son, "when the British Muse, such as she had come to be, was do- 
ing less, or had so nearly ceased to do anything, or to have any 
good opinion of herself, as precisely about the year 1764. Young 
was dying; Gray was recluse and indolent; Johnson had long 
given over his metrical experimentations on any except the most 
inconsiderable scale ; Akenside, Armstrong, Smollett, and others 
less known, Iiad prettv well revealed the amount of their woptli in 
poetry; and Churchill, after his ferocious blaze of what was really 
rage and declamation in metre, though conventionally it was called 
poetry, was prematurely defunct. Into this lull came Goldsmith's 
short but carefully finished poem." "There has not been so fine 
a poem since Pope's time," remarked Johnson to Boswell, on the 
very first evening after the return of young Auchinleck to London. 
It would have been no matter for surprise had Goldsmith dedicated 
this first work that he published under his own name to Johnson, 
wlio had for so long been his constant friend and adviser; and such 
a dedication would have carried w^eight in certain quarters. But 
there was a finer touch in Goldsmith's thought of inscribing the 
book to his brother Henry ; and no doubt the public were surprised 
and pleased to find a poor devil of an author dedicating a work to 
an Irish parson with ^40 a year, from whom he could not well ex- 
pect any return. It will be remembered that it was to this brother 
Henry that Goldsmith, ten years before, had sent the first sketch 
of the poem ; and now the wanderer, 

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," 

declares how his heart untraveJled 



GOLDSMITH. 49 

" Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, 
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain." 

The very first line of the poem strikes a key-note — there is in 
it a pathetic thrill of distance, and regret, and longing ; and it has 
the soft musical sound that pervades the whole composition. It is 
exceedingly interesting to note, as has already been mentioned, 
how Goldsmith altered and altered these lines until he had got 
them full of gentle vowel sounds. Where, indeed, in the English 
language could one find more graceful melody than this ? — 

" The naked negro, panting at the line, 
Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, 
Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, 
And thanks his gods for all the good they gave." 

It has been observed also that Goldsmith was the first to intro- 
duce into English poetry sonorous American — or rather Indian — 
names, as when he writes in this poem, 

" Wb€re wild Oswego spreads her swamps around. 
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound ; " 

and if it be charged against him that he ought to have known the 
proper accentuation of Niagara, it may be mentioned as a set-off 
that Sir Walter Scott, in dealing with his own country, mis-accent- 
uated " GlenaMdale," to say nothing of his having made of Rose- 
neath an island. Another characteristic of the Traveller is the 
extraordinary choiceness and conciseness of the diction, which, in-^ 
stead of suggesting pedantry or affectation, betrays on the con- 
trary, nothing but a delightful ease and grace. 

The English people are very fond of good English ; and thus 
it is that couplets from the Traveller and the Deserted Village 
have come into the common stock of our language, and that some- 
times not so much on account of the ideas they convey, as through 
their singular precision of epithet and musical sound. _ It is enough 
to make the angels weep to find such a couplet as this, 

" Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose. 
Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes," 

murdered in several editions of Goldsmith's works by the substi- 
tution of the commonplace " breathes " for " breasts "—and that after 
Johnson had drawn particular attention to the line by quotmg it in 
his dictionary. Perhaps, indeed, it may be admitted that the lit- 
erary charm of the Traveller is more apparent than the value of j 
any doctrine, however profound or ingenious, which the poem was , 
supposed to inculcate. We forget all about the " particular princi- 
ple of happiness " possessed by each European state, in listening 
to the melody of the singer, and in watching the successive and 
delightful pictures that he calls up before the imagination. 



50 GOLDSMITH. 

As in those domes where Caesars once bore sway, 
Defaced by time, and tottering in decay, 
There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, 
The shelter-seelving peasant builds his shed ; 
And, wondering man could want the larger pile, 
Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile." 

Then notice the blaze of patriotic idealism that bursts forth 
when he comes to talk of England. What sort of England had he 
been familiar with when he was consorting with the meanest 
wretches— the poverty-stricken, the sick, and squalid— in those 
Fleet-street dens .? But it is an England of bright streams and 
spacious lawns of which he writes ; and as for the people who 
inhabit the favoured land — 

** Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, 
With daring aims irregularly great; 
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 
I see the lords of human kind pass by." 

" Whenever I write any thing," Goldsmith had said, with a 
humorous exaggeration which Boswell, as usual, takes aji serieux, 
" the public make a point to know nothing about it." But we 
have Johnson's testimony to the fact that the Traveller " brou^^ht 
him into high reputation." No wonder. When the great Cham 
. declares it to be the finest poem published since the time of Pope 
we are irresistibly forced to think of the Essay 07t Ma?t. What a 
contrast there is between that tedious and stilted effort and this 
clear burst of bird-song ! The Traveller, however, did not im- 
mediately become popular, It was largely talked about, naturallv, 
among Goldsmith's friends ; and Johnson would scarcely suffer any 
criticism of it. At a dinner given long afterwards at Sir Joshua 
Reynolds s and fully reported by the invaluable Boswell, Reynolds 
remarked, " I was glad to hear Charles Fox say it was one of the 
finest poems in the English language." " Why were you glad ? " 
said Langton. " You surely had no doubt of this before ? " Here- 
upon Johnson struck in : " No ; the merit of the Traveller \s so 
well established that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it nor his 
censure diminish it." And he went on to say-G&dsmith having 
died and got beyond the reach of all critics and creditors som? 
three or four years before this time—" Goldsmith was a man who. 
whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do. He 
deserved a place in Westminster Abbey ; and every year he lived 
would have deserved it better." -^ 

Presently people began to talk about the new poem. A second 
edition was issued; a third ; a fourth. It is not probable that 
Goldsmith gained any pecuniary benefit from the growing popu- 
larityof the httle book; but he had "struck for honest fame," 
and that was now coming to him. He even made some slight 
acquaintance with " the great ; " and here occurs an incident whtch 
IS one of many that account for the love that the English people 



OOLDSMITH. 5. 

have for Goldsmith. It appears that Hawkins, calling one day on 
the Earl of Northumberland, found the author of the Traveller 
waiting in the outer room, in response to an invitation. Hawkins, 
having finished his own business, retired, but lingered about until 
the interview between Goldsmith and his lordship was over, having 
some curiosity about the result. Here follows Goldsmith's report 
to Hawkins : " His lordship told me he had read my poem, and 
was much delighted with it ; that he was going to be Lord-lieuten- 
ant of Ireland ; and that, hearing that I was a native of that coun- 
try, he should be glad to do me any kindness." " What did you 
answer ? " says Hawkins, no doubt expecting to hear of some 
application for pension or post. " Why," said Goldsmith, " I could 
say nothing but that I had a brother there, a clergyman, that stood 
in need of help " — and then he explained to Hawkins that he looked 
to the booksellers for support, and was not inclined to place 
dependence on the promises of great men. " Thus did this idiot 
in the affairs of the world," adds Hawkins, with a fatuity that is 
quite remarkable in its way, " trifle with his fortunes, and put back 
the hand that was held out to assist him ! Other offers of a like 
kind he either rejected or failed to improve, contenting himself 
with the patronage of one nobleman, whose mansion afforded him 
the delights of a splendid table and a retreat for a few days from 
the metropolis." It is a great pity we have not a description from 
the same pen of Johnson's insolent ingratitude in flinging the pair 
of boots downstairs. 



52 GOLDSMITH, 



CHAPTER X. 

MISCELLANEOUS WRITING. 

But one pecuniary result of this growing fame was a joint offer 
on the part of Griffin and Newbery of £10 for a selection from his 
printed essays ; and this selection was forthwith made and published 
with a preface written for the occasion. Here at once we can see 
that Goldsmith takes firmer ground. There is an air of confidence 
— of gayety, even — in his address to the pubhc ; although, as usual, 
accompanied by a whimsical mock-modesty that is extremely odd 
and effective. " Whatever right I have to complain of the public," 
he says, " they can, as yet, have no just reason to complain of me. 
If I have written dull Essays, they have hitherto treated them as 
dull Essays. Thus far we are at least upon par, and until they 
think fit to make me their humble debtor by praise, I am resolved 
not to lose a single inch of my self-importance. Instead, therefore, 
of attempting to estabhsh a credit amongst them, it will perhaps be 
wiser to apply to some more distant correspondent ; and as my 
drafts are in some danger of being protested at home, it may not 
be imprudent, upon this occasion, to draw my bills upon Posterity. 

" Mr. Posterity, 

" Sir : Nine hundred and ninety-nine years after sight hereof 
pay the bearer, or order, a thousand pounds' worth of praise, free 
from all deductions whatsoever, it being a commodity that will then 
be very serviceable to him, and place it to the account of, etc." 

The bill is not yet due ; but there can in the meantime be no 
harm in discounting it so far as to say that these Essays deserve 
very decided praise. They deal with all manner of topics, matters 
of fact, matters of imagination, humorous descriptions, learned crit- 
icisms : and then, whenever the entertainer thinks he is becoming 
dull, he suddenly tells a quaint little story and walks off amidst the 
laughter he knows he has produced. It is not a very ambitious or 
. sonorous sort of literature ; but it was admirably fitted for its aim 
— the passing of the immediate hour in an agreeable and fairly in- 
tellectual way. One can often see, no doubt, that these Essays are 
occasionally written in a more or less perfunctory fashion, the writer 



GOLDSMITH. 



53 



not being moved by much enthusiasm in his subject ; but even then 
a. quaint literary grace seldom fails to atone, as when, writing about 
the English Clergy, and complaining that they do not sufficiently 
in their addresses stoop to mean capacities, he says : " Whatever 
may become of the higher orders of mankind, who are generally 
possessed of collateral motives to virtue, the vulgar should be par- 
ticularly regarded, whose behaviour in civil life is totally hinged 
upon their hopes and fears. Those who constitute the basis of the 
great fabric of society should be particularly regarded ; for in 
policy, as in architecture, ruin is most fatal when it begins from 
the bottom." There was, indeed, throughout Goldsmith's miscel- 
laneous writing much more common sense than might have been 
expected from a writer who was supposed to have none. 

As regards his chance criticisms on dramatic and poetical liter- 
ature, these are generally found to be incisive and just ; while 
sometimes they exhibit a wholesome disregard of mere tradition 
and authority. " Milton's translation of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha," 
he says, for example, " is universally known and generally admired, 
in our opinion much above its merit." If the present writer might 
for a moment venture into such an arena, he would express the 
honest belief that that translation is the very worst translation tliat 
was ever made of any thing. But there is the happy rendering of 
simplex fnunditits, which counts for much. 

By this time Goldsmith had also written his charming ballad of 
Edwin and Ajigelina, which was privately "printed for the amuse- 
ment of the Countess of Northumberland," ai^u which afterwards 
appeared in the P^icar of Wakefield. It seems clear enough that 
this quaint and pathetic piece was suggested by an old ballad 
beginning, 

" Gentle herdsman, tell to me, 
Of curtesy I thee pray. 
Unto the towne of Walsingham 
Which is the right and ready way, 

which Percy had shown to Goldsmith, and which, patched up, sub- 
.sequently appeared in the Reliques, But Goldsmith's ballad is 
original enough to put aside all the discussion about plagiarism 
which was afterwards started. In the old fragment the weeping 
pilgrim receives directions from the herdsman, and goes on her 
way, and we hear of her no more ; in Edwin and Angelina the for- 
lorn and despairing maiden suddenly finds herself confronted by 
the long-lost lover whom she had so cruelly used. This is the 
ri-or,.--- • ^-Mich that reveals the hand of the artist. And here again 
^ ,>t.nous to note the care with which Goldsmith repeatedly re- 
vised his writings. The ballad originally ended with these 'two 
Stanzas : 

" Here amidst sylvan bowers we'll rove, 
From lawn to woodland stray; 
Blest as the songsters of the grove, 
And innocent as they. 



^4 GOLDSMITH. 

" To all that want, and all that wail, 
Our pity shall be given, 
And when this life of love shall fail, 
We'll love again in heaven." 

But subsequently it must have occurred to the author that, the 
dramatic disclosure once made, and the lovers restored to each 
other, any lingering over the scene only weakened the force of the 
climax; hence these stanzas were judiciously excised. It may be 
doubted, however, whether the original version of the last couplet, 

" And the last sigh that rends the heart 
Shall break thy Edwin's too.'' 

was improved by being altered into 

'' The sigh that rends thy constant heart 
Shall break thy Edwin's too." 

Meanwhile Goldsmith had resorted to hack-work again ; noth- 
ing being expected from the Vicar of Wakefield^ now lying in New- 
bery's shop, for that had been paid for, and his expenses were in- 
creasing, as became his greater station. In the interval between 
the publication of the Ti'aveller and of the Vicar, he moved into 
better chambers in Garden Court ; he hired a man-servant, he 
blossomed out into very fine clothes. Indeed, so effective did his 
first suit seem to be — the purple silk small-clothes, the scarlet 
roquelaure, the wig, sword, and gold-headed cane — that, as Mr. 
Forster says, he " amazed his friends with no less than three 
similar suits, not less expensive, in the next six months." Part of 
this display was no doubt owing to a suggestion from Reynolds 
that Goldsmith, having a medical degree, might just as well add the 
practice of a physician to his literary work, to magnify his social 
position. Goldsmith, always willing to please his friends, acceded ; 
but his practice does not appear to have been either extensive or 
long-continued. It is said that he drew out a prescription for a cer- 
tain Mrs. Sidebotham which so appalled the apothecary, that he 
refused to make it up ; and that, as the lady sided with the apothe- 
cary, he threw up the case and his profession at the same time. If 
it was money Goldsmith wanted, he was not likely to get it in that 
way ; he had neither the appearance nor the manner fitted to 
humour the sick and transform healthy people into valetudinarians. 
If it was the esteem of his friends and popularity outside that circle, 
he was soon to acquire enough of both. On the 27th jyT-^—^-- "tA^^ 
fifteen months after the appearance of the Traveller^i.^^^ ^,... 
Wakefield was published. 



GOLDSMITH. 



55 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 

The Vica7' of Wakefield, considered structurally, follows the 
lines of the Book of Job. You take a good man, overwhelm him 
with successive misfortunes, show the pure flame of his soul burn- 
ing in the. midst of the darkness, and then, as the reward of his 
patience and fortitude and submission, restore him gradually to 
happiness, with even larger flocks and herds than before. The 
machinery by which all this is brought about is, in the Vicar' of 
Wakefield, the weak part of the story. The plot is full of wild 
improbabilities ; in fact, the expedients by which all the members 
of the family are brought together and made happy at the same 
time, are nothing short of desperate. It is quite clear, too, that 
the author does not know what to make of the episode of Olivia 
and her husband ; they are allowed to drop through ; we leave him 
playing the French horn at a relation's house ; while she, in her 
father's home, is supposed to be unnoticed, so much are they all 
taken up with the rejoicings over the double wedding. It is very 
probable that when Goldsmith began the story he had no very 
definite plot concocted ; and that it was only when the much-per- 
secuted Vicar had to be restored to happiness, that he found the 
entanglements surrounding him, and had to make frantic efforts 
to break through them. But, be that as it may, it is not for the 
plot that people now read the Vicar of Wakefield j it is not the 
intricacies of the story that have made it the delight of the world. 
Surely human nature must be very much the same when this simple 
description of a quiet English home went straight to the heart of 
nations in both hemispheres. 

And the wonder is that Goldsmith of all men should have pro- 
duced such a perfect picture of domestic life. What had his own 
life been but a moving about between garret and tavern, between 
bachelor's lodgings and clubs 1 Where had he seen — unless, in- 
deed, he looked back through the mist of years to the scenes of 
his childhood — all this gentle government, and wise blindness ; 
all this affection, and consideration, and respect .'' There is as 
much human nature in the character of the Vicar alone as would 
have furnished any fifty of the novels of that day, or of this. Who 
has not been charmed by his sly and quaint humour, by his moral 
dignity and simple vanities, even by the little secrets he reveals to 
us of his paternal rule. •' ' Ay,' returned I, not knowing well what 



56 GOLDSMITH. 

to think of the matter, ' heaven grant they may be both the better 
for it this day three months ! ' This was one of those observations 
I usually made to impress my wife with an opinion of my sagacity; 
for if the girls succeeded, then it was a pious wish fulfilled ; but if 
any thing unfortunate ensued, then it might be looked on as a 
prophecy." We know how Miss Olivia was answered, when, at 
her mother's prompting, she set up for being well skilled in con- 
troversy : 

" ' Why, my dear, what controversy can she have read ? ' cried 
I. ' It does not occur to me that I ever put such books into her 
hands : you certainly overrate her merit.' — ' Indeed, papa,' replied 
Olivia, ' she does not ; I have read a great deal of controversy. I 
have read the disputes between Thwackum and Square ; the con- 
troversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the savage ; and I 
am now employed in reading the controversy in Religious Court- 
ship.' — ' Very well,' cried I, ' that's a good girl ; I find you are 
perfectly qualified for making converts, and so go help your mother 
to make the gooseberry pie.' " 

It is with a great gentleness that the good man reminds his wife 
and daughters that, after their sudden loss of fortune, it does not 
become them to wear much finery. " The first Sunday, in partic- 
ular, their behaviour served to mortify me. I had desired my 
girls the preceding night to be dressed early the next day ; for I 
always loved to be at church a good while before the rest of the con- 
gregation. They punctually obeyed my directions ; but when we 
were to assemble in the morning at breakfast, down came my wife 
and daughters, dressed out in all their former splendour ; their hair 
plastered up with pomatum, their faces patched to taste, their trains 
bundled up in a heap behind, and rustling at every motion. I could 
not help smiling at their vanity, particularly that of my wife, from 
whom I expected more discretion. In this exigence, therefore, 
my only resource was to order my son, with an important air, to 
call our coach. The girls were amazed at the command ; but I 
repeated it with more solemnity than before. ' Surely, my dear, 
you jest,' cried my wife ; ' we can walk it perfectly well : we want 
no coach to carry us now.' — ' You mistake, child,' returned I, 'we 
do want a coach ; for if we walk to church in this trim, the very 
children in the parish will hoot after us.' — • Indeed,' replied my 
wife, ' I always imagined that my Charles was fond of seeing his 
children neat and handsome about him.' — ' You may be as neat as 
you please,' interrupted I, ' and I shall love you the better for it ; 
but all this is not neatness, but frippery. These rufflings, and 
pinkings, and patchings will only make us hated by all the wives of 
our neighbours. No, my children,' continued I, more gravely, 
* those gowns may be altered into something of a plainer cut ; for 
5nery is very unbecoming in us, who want the means of decency. 
I do not know whether such flouncing and shredding is becoming 
even in the rich, if we consider, upon a moderate calculation, that 
the nakedness of the indigent world might be clothed from the 
trimmings of the vain.' 



GOLDSMITH. 



57 



" This remonstrance had the proper effect : they went with great 
composure, that very instant, to change their dress ; and the next 
day I had the satisfaction of finding my daughters, at their own 
request, employed in cutting up their trains into Sunday waistcoats 
for Dick and Bill the two little ones ; and, what was still more 
satisfactory, the gowns seemed improved by this curtailing." And 
again, when he discovered the two girls making a wash for their 
faces : " My daughters seemed equally busy with the rest; and I 
observed them for a good while cooking something over the fire. 
I at first supposed they were assisting their mother, but little Dick 
informed me in a whisper that they were making a wash for the face. 
Washes of all kinds I had a natural antipathy to ; for I knew that, 
instead of mending the complexion, they spoil it. I therefore 
approached my chair by sly degrees to the fire, and grasping the 
poker, as if it wanted mending, seemingly by accident overturned 
the whole composition, and it was too late to begin another." 

All this is done with such a light, homely touch, that one gets 
familiarly to know these people without being aware of it. There 
is no insistance. There is no dragging you along by the collar ; 
confronting you with certain figures ; and compelling you to look 
at this and study that. The artist stands by you, and laughs in his 
quiet way ; and you are laughing too, when suddenly you find that 
human beings have silently come into the void before you ; and 
you know them for friends ; and even after the vision has faded 
awa}^, and the beautiful light and colour and glory of romance-land 
have vanished, you cannot forget them. They have become part 
of your life ; you will take them to the grave with you. 

The story, as every one perceives, has its obvious blemishes. 
" There are an hundred faults in this thing," says Goldsmith him- 
self, in the prefixed Advertisement. But more particularly, in the 
midst of all the impossibilities taking place in and around the jail, 
when that chameleon-like deus ex 7nachind^ Mr. Jenkinson, winds 
up the tale in hot haste, Goldsmith pauses to put in a sort of apol- 
ogy. " Nor can I go on without a reflection," he says gravely, 
" on those accidental meetings, which, though they happen every 
day, seldom excite our surprise but upon some extraordinary oc- 
casion. To what a fortuitous concurrence do we not owe every 
pleasure and convenience of our lives ! How many seeming 
accidents must unite before we can be clothed or fed ! The peas- 
ant must be disposed to labour, the shower must fall, the wind fill 
^he merchant's sail, or numbers must want the usual supply." 
'This is Mr. Thackeray's ■' simple rogue " appearing again in adult 
life. Certainly, if our supply of food and clothing depended on 
such accidents as happened to make the Vicar's family happy all 
at once, there would be a good deal of shivering and starvation in 
the world. Moreover it may be admitted that on occasion Gold- 
smith's fine instinct deserts him ; and even in describing those 
domestic relations which are the charm of the novel, he blunders 
into the unnatural. When Mr. Burchell, for example, leaves the 
house in consequence of a quarrel with Mrs. Primrose, the Vicar 



58 



GOLDSMITH. 



questions his daughter as to whether she had received from that 
poor gentleman any testimony of his affection for her. She replies 
No ; but remembers to have heard him remark that he never knew 
a woman who could find merit in a man that was poor. " Such, 
my dear," continued the Vicar, " is the common cant of all the un- 
fortunate or idle. But I hope you have been taught to judge prop- 
erly of such men, and that it would be even madness to expect 
happiness from one who has been so very bad an economist of his 
own. Your mother and I have no better prospects for you. The 
next winter, which you will probably spend in town, will give you 
opportunities of making a more prudent choice." Now it is not 
at all likely that a father, however anxious to have his daughter 
well married and settled, would ask her so delicate a question in 
open domestic circle, and would then publicly inform her that she 
was expected to choose a husband on her forthcoming visit to 
town. 

Whatever may be said about any particular incident like this, 
the atmosphere of the book is true. Goethe, to whom a German 
translation of the Vicar was read by Herder some four years after 
the publication in England, not only declared it at the time to be one 
of the best novels ever written, but again and again throughout his 
life reverted to the charm and delight with which he had made the 
acquaintance of the English " prose idyll," and took it for granted 
that it was a real picture of English life. Despite all the machinery 
of Mr. Jenkinson's schemes, who could doubt it 1 Again and 
again there are recurrent strokes of such vividness and naturalness 
that we yield altogether to the necromancer. Look at this perfect 
picture — of human emotion and outside nature — put in in a few sen- 
ten'ces. The old clergyman, after being in search of his daughter, 
has found her, and is now — having left her in an inn — returning 
to his family and his home. " And now my heart caught new sen- 
sations of pleasure, the nearer I approached that peaceful mansion. 
As a bird that had been frighted from its nest my affections 
outwent my haste, and hovered round my little fireside with all the 
rapture of expectation, I called up the many fond things I had to 
say, and anticipated the welcome I was to receive. I already felt 
my wife's tender embrace, and smiled at the joy of my little ones. 
As I walked but slowly, the night waned apace. The labourers of 
the day were all retired to rest ; the lights were out in every cot- 
tage ; no sounds were heard but of the shrilling cock, and the deep- 
mouthed watch-dog at hollow distance. I approached my little 
abode of pleasure, and, before I was within a furlong of the place, 
our honest mastiff came running to welcome me." " The deep- 
motithed watch-dog at hollow distance'''' — what more perfect de- 
scription of the stillness of night was even given ? 

And then there are other qualities in this delightful Vicar of 
IVakeJield than merely idyllic tenderness, and pathos, and sly hu- 
mour. There is a firm presentation of the crimes and brutalities of 
the world. The pure light that shines within that domestic circle is 
all the brighter because of the black outer ring that is here and 



GOLDSMITH. 



59 



there indicated rather than described. How could we appreciate 
all the simplicities of the good man's household, but for the 
rogueries with which they are brought in contact ? And although 
we laugh at Moses and his gross of green spectacles, and the man- 
ner in which the Vicar's wife and daughter are imposed on by 
Miss Wilhelmina Skeggs and Lady Blarney, with their lords and 
ladies and their tributes to virtue, there is no laughter demanded 
of us when we find the simplicity and moral dignity of the Vicar 
meeting and beating the jeers and taunts of the abandoned wretches 
in the prison. This is really a remarkable episode. The author 
was under the obvious temptation to make much comic material 
out of the situation ; while another temptation, towards the goody- 
goody side, was not far off. But the Vicar undertakes the duty of 
reclaiming these castaways with a modest patience and earnest- 
ness in every way in keeping with his character ; while they, on the 
other hand, are not too easily moved to tears of repentance. His 
first efforts, it will be remembered, were not too successful. " Their 
insensibility excited my highest compassion, and blotted my own 
uneasiness from my mind. It even appeared a duty incumbent 
upon me to attempt to reclaim them. I resolved, therefore, once 
more to return, and, in spite of their contempt, to give them my 
advice, and conquer them by my perseverance. Going, therefore, 
among them again, I informed Mr. Jenkinson of my design, at 
which he laughed heartily, but communicated it to the rest. The 
proposal was received with the greatest good-humour, as it prom- 
ised to afford a new fund of entertainment to persons who had now 
no other resource for mirth but what could be derived from ridicule 
or debauchery. 

" I therefore read them a portion of the service with a loud, 
unaffected voice, and found my audience perfectly merry.upon the 
occasion. Lewd whispers, groans of contrition burlesqued, wink- 
ing and coughing, alternately excited laughter. However, I con- 
tinued with my natural solemnity to read on, sensible that what 
I did might mend some, but could itself receive no contamination 
from any. 

^' After reading, I entered upon my exhortation, which was 
rather calculated at first to amuse them than to reprove. I pre- 
viously observed, that no other motive but their welfare could in- 
duce me to this ; that I was their fellow-prisoner, and now got 
nothing by preaching. I was sorry, I said, to hear them so very 
profane ; because they got nothing by it, but might lose a great deal : 
' For be assured, my friends,' cried I — 'for you are my friends, 
however the world may disclaim your friendshiiD — though you swore 
twelve thousand oaths in a day, it would not put one penny in your 
purse. Then what signifies calling every moment upon the devil, 
and courting his friendship, since you find how scurvily he uses 
you ? He has given you nothing here, you find, but a mouthful 
of oaths and an empty belly ; and, by the best accounts I have of 
him, he will give you nothing that's good hereafter. 

" ' If used ill in our dealings with one man, we naturally go 



6o GOLDSMITH. 

elsewhere. Were is not worth your while, then, just to try how 
you may like the usage of another master, who gives you fair 
promises at least to come to him ? Surely, my friends, of all stu- 
pidity in the world, his must be the greatest, who, after robbing a 
house, runs to the thief-takers for protection. And yet, how are 
you more wise ? You are all seeking comfort from one that has 
already betrayed you, applying to a more malicious being than any 
thief-taker of them all; for they only decoy and then hang you; 
but he decoys and hangs, and, what is worst of all, will not let you 
loose after the hangman has done.' 

"When I had concluded, I received the compliments of my 
audience, some of whom came and shook me by the hand, swear- 
ing that I was a very honest fellow, and that they desired my fur- 
ther acquaintance. I therefore promised to repeat my lecture next 
day, and actually conceived some hopes of making a reformation 
here ; for it had ever been my opinion, that no man was past the 
hour of amendment, every heart lying open to the shafts of reproof, 
if the archer could but take a proper aim." 

His wife and children, naturally dissuading him from an effort 
which seemed to them only to bring ridicule upon him, are met by 
a grave rebuke ; and on the next morning he descends to the com- 
mon prison, where, he says, he found the prisoners very merry, 
expecting his arrival, and each prepared to play some jail-trick on 
the Doctor. 

*' There was one whose trick gave more universal pleasure than 
all the rest ; for, observing the manner in which I had disposed my 
books on the table before me, he very dexterously displaced one of 
them, and put an obscene jest-book of his own in the place. How- 
ever, I took no notice of all that this mischievous group of little 
beings could do, but went on, perfectly sensible that what was 
ridiculous in my attempt would excite mirth only the first or second 
time, while what was serious would be permanent. My design 
succeeded, and in less than six days some were penitent, and all 
attentive. 

"It was now that I applauded my perseverance and address, 
at thus giving sensibility to wretches divested of every moral feel- 
ing, and now began to think of doing them temporal services also, 
by rendering their situation somewhat more comfortable. Their 
time had hitherto been divided between famine and excess, tumul- 
tuous riot and bitter repining. Their only employment was quar- 
relling among each other, playing at cribbage, and cutting tobacco- 
stoppers. From this last mode of idle industry I took the hint of 
setting such as choose to work at cutting pegs for tobacconists and 
shoemakers, the proper wood being bought by a general subscrip- 
tion, and, when manufactured, sold by my appointment; so that 
each earned something every day — a trifle indeed, but sufficient to 
maintain him. 

" I did not stop here, but instituted fines for the punishment of 
immorality, and rewards for peculiar industry. Thus, in less than 
a fortijight I ^ad formed them into something social and humane, 



COLDSMITH. 6 1 

and had the pleasure of regarding m3^self as a legislator who had 
brought men from their native ferocity into friendship and obedi- 
ence." 

Of course, all this about jails and thieves was calculated to 
shock the nerves of those who liked their literature perfumed with 
rose-water. Madame Riccoboni, to whom Burke had sent the 
book, wrote to Garrick, " Le plaidoyer en faveur des voleurs, des 
petits larrons, des gens de mauvaises moeurs, est fort eloign^ de 
me plaire." Others, no doubt, considered the introduction of 
Miss Skeggs and Lady Blarney as " vastly low." But the curious 
thing is that the literary critics of the day seem to have been alto- 
gether silent about the book — perhaps they were " puzzled " by it, 
as Southey has suggested. Mr. Forster, who took the trouble to 
search the periodical literature of the time, says that, " apart from 
bald recitals of the plot, not a word was said in the way of criticism 
about the book, either in praise or blame." The Sf. James's CJwofi- 
icle did not condescend to notice its appearance, and the Monthly 
Review confessed frankly that nothing was to be made of it. The 
better sort of newspapers, as well as the more dignified reviews, 
contemptuously left it to the patronage of Lloyd'' s Evetiing Post, 
the London Chronicle^ and journals of that class ; which simply 
informed their readers that a new novel, called the Vicar of Wake- 
field, had been published, that "the editor is Doctor Goldsmith, 
who has affixed his name to an introductory Advertisement, and 
that such and such were the incidents of the story." Even his 
friends, with the exception of Burke, did not seem to consider tliat 
any remarkable new birth in literature had occurred ; and it is 
probable that this was a still greater disappointment to Goldsmith, 
who was so anxious to be thought well of at the Club. However, 
the public took to the story. A second edition was published in 
May ; a third in August. Goldsmith, it is true, received no pecu- 
niary gain from this success, for as we have seen, Johnson had sold 
the novel outright to Francis Newbery ; but his name was growing 
in importance with the booksellers. 

There was need that it should, for his increasing expenses — his 
fine clothes, his suppers, his whist at the Devil Tavern — were in- 
volving him in deeper and deeper difficulties. How was he to 
extricate himself ? — or rather the question that would naturally 
occur to Goldsmith was how was he to continue that hand-to-mouth 
existence that had its compensations along with its troubles ? 
Novels like the Vicar of Wakefield zxt not written at a moment's 
notice, even though any Newbery, judging by results, is willing to 
double that ^60 which Johnson considered to be a fair price for 
the story at the time. There was the usual resource of hack-writ- 
ing; and, no doubt. Goldsmith was compelled to fall back on that, 
if only to keep the elder Newbery, in whose debt he was, in a good 
humour. But the author of the Vicar of Wakefield may be excused 
if he looked round to see if there was not some more profitable 
work for him to turn his hand to. It was at this time that he began 
to think of writing a comedy. 



62 gold:smith. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE GOOD-NATURED MAN. 

Amid much miscellaneous work, mostly of the compilation 
order, the play of the Good-natured Man began to assume concrete 
form, insomuch that Johnson, always the friend of this erratic 
Irishman, had promised to write a Prologue for it. It is with 
regard to this prologue that Boswell tells a foolish and untrust- 
worthy story about Goldsmith. Dr. Johnson had recently been 
honoured by an interview with his Sovereign ; and the members of 
the Club were in the habit of flattering him by begging for a rep- 
etition of his ciccount of that famous event. On one occasion, 
during this recital, Boswell relates. Goldsmith " remained unmoved 
upon a sofa at some distance, affecting not to join in the least in 
the eager curiosity of the company. He assigned as a reason for 
his gloom and seeming inattention that he apprehended Johnson 
had relinquished his purpose of furnishing him with a prologue to 
his play, with the hopes of which he had beenflattered ; but it was 
strongly suspected that he was fretting with chagrin and envy at 
the singular honour Doctor Johnson had lately enjoyed. At length 
the frankness and simplicity of his natural character prevailed. 
He sprang from the sofa, advanced to Johnson, and, in a kind of 
flutter, from imagining himself in the situation which he had just 
been hearing described, exclaimed, ' Well, you acquitted yourself 
in this conversation better than I should have done ; for I should 
have bowed and stammered through the whole of it.'" It is 
obvious enough that the only part of this anecdote which is quite 
worthy of credence is the actual phrase used by Goldsmith, which 
is full of his customary generosity and self-depreciation. All those 
" suspicions " of his envy of his friend may safely be discarded, 
for they are mere guesswork ; even though it might have been 
natural enough for a man like Goldsmith, conscious of his singular 
and original genius, to measure himself against Johnson, who was 
merely a man of keen perception and shrewd reasoning, and to 
compare the deference paid to Johnson with the scant courtesy 
shown to himself. 

As a matter of fact, the Prologue was written by Dr. Johnson; 
and the now complete comedy was, after some little arrangement 
of personal differences between Goldsmith and Garrick, very 



GOLDSMITH. (^^^ 

kindly undertaken by Reynolds, submitted for Garrick's approval. 
But nothing came of Reynolds's intervention. Perhaps Goldsmith 
resented Garrick's airs of patronage towards a poor devil of an 
author; perhaps Garrick was surprised by the manner in which 
well-intentioned criticisms were taken ; at all events, after a good 
deal of shilly-shallying, the play was taken out of Garrick's hands. 
Fortunately, a project was just at this moment on foot for starting 
the rival theatre in Covent Garden, under the management of 
George Colman ; and to Colman Goldsmith's play wa'^ forthwith 
consigned. The play was accepted ; but it was a long time before 
it was produced ; and in that interval it may fairly be presumed the 
res angusta dotui of Goldsmith did not become any more free and 
generous than before. It was in this interval that the elder New- 
bery died ; Goldsmith had one patron the less. Another patron 
who offered himself was civilly bowed to the door. This is an inci- 
dent in Goldsmith's career which, like his interview with the Earl 
of Northumberland, should ever be remembered in his honour. 
The Government of the day were desirous of enlisting on their 
behalf the services of writers of somewhat better position than the 
mere libellers whose pens were the slaves of anybody's purse ; and 
a Mr. Scott, a chaplain of Lord Sandwich, appears to have 
imagined that it would be worth while to buy Goldsmith. He ap- 
plied to Goldsmith in due course; and this is an account of the 
interview : " I found him in a miserable set of chambers in the 
Temple. I told him my authority ; I told him I was empowered 
to pay most liberally for his exertions ; and, would you believe it ! 
he was so absurd as to say, ' I can earn as much as will supply my 
wants without writing for any party ; the assistance you offer is 
therefore unnecessary to me.' And I left him in his garret." 
Needy as he was, Goldsmith had too much self-respect to become 
a paid libeller and cutthroat of public reputations. 

On the evening of Friday, the 29th of January, 1768, when 
Goldsmith had now reached the age of forty, the comedy of The 
Good-iiaU(7^ed Man was produced at Covent Garden Theatre. 
The Prologue had, according to promise, been written by Johnson; 
and a very singular prologue it was. Even Boswell was struck by 
the odd contrast between this sonorous piece of melancholy and 
the fun that was to follow. "The first lines of this Prologue," 
he conscientiously remarks, "are strongly characteristical of the 
dismal gloom of his mind ; which, in his case, as in the case of all 
who are distressed with the same malady of imagination, transfers 
to others its own feelings. Who could suppose it was to introduce 
a comedy, when Mr. Bensley solemnly began — 

" * Pressed with the load of life, the weary mind 
Surveys the general toil of humankind ' ? 

But this dark ground might make Goldsmith's humour shine the 
more." When we come to the comedy itself, we find but little 
bright humour in the opening passages. The author is obviously 



64 GOLDSMITH. 

timid, anxious, and constrained. There is nothing of the brisk, 
confident vivacity with which She Stoops to Conq?ier opens. The 
novice does not yet understand the art of making his characters 
explain themselves ; and accordingly the benevolent uncle and 
honest Jarvis indulge in a conversation which, laboriously descrip- 
tive of the character of young Honeywood, is spoken " at " the 
audience. With the entrance of young Honeywood himself, Gold- 
smith endeavours to become a little more sprightly; but there is 
still anxiety hanging over him, and the epigrams are little more 
than merely formal antitheses. 

'^Jarvis. This bill from your tailor ; this from your mercer; and this 
from the little broker in Crooked Lane. He says he has been at a great 
deal of trouble to get back the money you borrowed. 

" Hofu That I don't know ; but I'm sure we were at a great deal of 
trouble in getting him to lend it. 

" yar. He has lost all patience. 

^^ Hon. Then he has lost a very good thing. 

" Jar. There's that ten guineas you were sending to the poor gentle- 
man and his children in the Fleet. I believe that would stop his mouth, 
for a while at least. 

" Ho7i. Ay, Jarvis, but what will fill their mouths in the meantime "i " 

This young Honeywood, the hero of the play, is, and remains 
throughout, a somewhat ghostly personage. He has attributes, 
but no flesh or blood. There is much more substance in the next 
character introduced — the inimitable Croaker, who revels in evil 
forebodings and drinks deep of the luxury of woe. These are the 
two chief characters ; but then a play must have a plot. And 
perhaps it would not be fair, so far as the plot is concerned, to 
judge of The Good-fiaticred Man merely as a literary production. 
Intricacies that seem tedious and puzzling on paper appear to be 
clear enough on the stage : it is much more easy to remember the 
history and circumstances of a person whom we see before us, than 
to attach these to a mere name — especially as the name is sure to 
be clipped down from Honeywood io Hon., and from Leontine to 
Leo7i. However, it is in the midst of all the cross-purposes of the 
lovers that we once more come upon our old friend Beau Tibbs — - 
though Mr. Tibbs is now in much better circumstances, and has 
been renamed by his creator Jack Lofty. Garrick had objected to 
the introduction of Jack, on the ground that he was only a dis; 
traction. But Goldsmith, whetli^^- in writing a novel or a play, 
was more anxious to represent human nature than to prune a plot, 
and paid but little respect to the unities, if only he could arouse 
our interest. And who is not delighted with this Jack Lofty and 
his "duchessy " talk — his airs of patronage, his mysterious hints, 
his gay familiarity with the great, his audacious lying .'' 

♦' Lofty. Waller? Waller ? Is he of the house ? 

'* Mrs. Croaker. The modern poet of that name, sir. 

*' Lof. Oh, a modern ! We men of business desuise the moderns ; and 



GOLDSMITH. 5^ 

as for the ancients, we have no time to read them. Poetry is a pretty 
thing enough for our wives and daughters ; but not for us. Why now, 
here I stand that know nothing of books. I say, madam, I know nothing 
of books ; and yet, I believe, upon a land-carriage fishery, a stamp act, or 
a jaghire, I cnn talk my two hours without feeling the want of them. 

" Mrs. Cro. The world is no stranger to INIr. Lofty's eminence in 
every capacity. 

" Lof. I vow to gad, madam, you make me blush. I'm nothing, noth- 
ing, nothing in the world ; a mere obscure gentleman. To be sure, in- 
deed, one or two of the present ministers are pleased to represent me as 
a formidable man. I know they are pleased to bespatter me at all their 
little dirty levees. Yet, upon my soul, I wonder what they see in me to 
treat me so ! Measures, not men, have always been my mark ; and I 
vow, by all that's honourable, my resentment has never done the men, as 
mere men, any manner of harm — that is, as mere men. 

'^ Mrs. Cro. What importance, and yet what modesty ! 

**Lof Oh, if you talk of modesty, madam, there, I own, I'm accessi- 
ble to praise : modesty is my foible : it was so the Duke of Brentford 
used to say of me. ' I love Jack Lofty,' he used to say: 'no man has a 
finer knowledge of things ; quite a man of information ; and when he 
speaks upon his legs, by the Lord he's prodigious, he scouts them ; and 
yet all men have their faults; too much modesty is his,' says his grace. 

" Mj's. Cro. And yet, I dare say, you don't want assurance when you 
come to solicit for your friends. 

'^Lof. Oh, there indeed I'm in bronze. Apropos! I have just been 
mentioning Miss Richland's case to a certain personage ; we must name 
no names. When I ask, I am not to be put off, madam. No, no, I take 
my friend by the button. A fine girl, sir ; great justice in her case. A 
friend of mine — borough interest — business must be done, Mr. Secretary. 
— I say, Mr. Secretary, her business must be done, sir. That's my way, 
madam. 

" Mrs. Cro. Bless me ! you said all this to the Secretary of State, did 
you ? 

"Z^. I did not say the Secretary, did I .? Well, curse it, since you 
have found me out, I will not deny it. It was to the Secretary." 

Strangely enough, what may now seem to some of us the very 
best scene in the Good-natured Ma?i — the scene, that is, in which 
young Honeywood, suddenly finding Miss Richland without, is 
compelled to dress up the two bailiffs in possession of his house 
and introduce them to her as gentlemen friends — was very nearly 
damning the play on the first night of its production. The pit was 
of opinion that it was "low;" and subsequently the critics took 
up the cry, and professed themselves to be so deeply shocked by 
the vulgar humours of the bailiffs that Goldsmith had to cut them 
out. But on the opening night the anxious author, who had been 
rendered nearly distracted by the cries and hisses produced by 
this scene, was somewhat reassured when the audience began to 
laugh again over the tribulations of Mr. Croaker. To the actor 
who played the part he expressed his warm gratitude when the 
piece was over; assuring him that he had exceeded Ws own con- 
ception of the character, and that " the fine comic richness of his 
colouring made it almost appear as hew to him as to any other per- 
son in the house." 



66 GOLDSMITH. 

The new play had been on the whole favourably received ; and, 
when Goldsmith went along afterwards to the Club, his compan- 
ions were doubtless not at all surprised to find him in good spirits. 
He was even merrier than usual, and consented to sing his favourite 
ballad about the old Woman tossed in a Blanket. But those hisses 
and cries were still rankling in his memory; and he himself subse- 
quently confessed that he was " suffering horrid tortures." Nay, 
when the other members of the Club had gone, leaving him and 

Johnson together, he '- burst out a-crying, and even swore by 

that he would never write again." When Goldsmith told this 
story in after-days, Johnson was naturally astonished ; perhaps — 
himself not suffering much from an excessive sensitiveness — he 
may have attributed that little burst of hysterical emotion to the 
excitement of the evening increased by a glass or two of punch, 
and determined therefore never to mention it. "All which. Doc- 
tor," he said, " I thought had been a secret between you and me ; 
and I am sure I would not have said anything about it for the 
world." Indeed there was little to cry over, either in the first re- 
ception of the piece or in its subsequent fate. With the offending 
bailiffs cut out, the comedy would seem to have been very fairly 
successful. The proceeds of three of the evenings were Gold- 
smith's payment ; and in this manner he received ^400. Then 
Griffin published the play; and from this source Goldsmith re- 
ceived an additional ;^ 1 00; so that altogether he was very well 
paid for his work. Moreover he had appealed against the judg- 
ment of the pit and the dramatic critics, by printing in the published 
edition the bailiff scene which had been removed from the stage ; 
and the Monthly Review was so extremely kind as to say that 
" the baihff and his blackguard follower appeared intolerable on 
the stage, yet we are not disgusted with them in the perusal." 
Perhaps we have grown less scrupulous since then; but at all 
events it would be difficult for anybody nowadays to find any thing 
but good-natured fun in that famous scene. There is an occasional 
"damn," it is true; but then English officers have always been 
permitted that little playfulness, and these two gentlemen were 
supposed to "serve in the Fleet;" while if they had been particu- 
larly refined in their speech and manner, how could the author 
have aroused Miss Richland's suspicions? It is possible that the 
two actors who played the bailiff and his follower may have intro- 
duced some vulgar " gag " into their parts ; but there is no war- 
ranty for any thing of the kind in the play as we now read it. 



GOLDSMITH, 



(>1 



CHAPTER XIII. 

GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY. 

The appearance of the Good-natured Ma7i ushered in a halcyon 
period in Goldsmith's life. The Traveller and the Vicar had 
gained for him only reputation : this new comedy put ^500 in his 
pocket. Of course that was too big a sum for Goldsmith to have 
about him long. Four-fifths of it he immediately expended on the 
purchase and decoration of a set of chambers in Brick Court, Mid- 
dle Temple ; with the remainder he appears to have begun a series 
of entertainments in this new abode, which were perhaps more 
remarkable for their mirth than their decorum. There was no sort 
of frolic in which Goldsmith would not indulge for the amusement 
of his guests ; he would sing them songs ; he would throw his wig 
to the ceiling ; he would dance a minuet. And then they had cards, 
forfeits, blind-man's-buff, until Mr. Blackstone, then engaged on 
his Coviine7itaries in the rooms below, was driven nearly mad by 
the uproar. These parties would seem to have been of a most non- 
descript character — chance gatherings of any obscure authors or 
actors whom he happened to meet; but from time to time there 
were more formal entertainments, at which Johnson, Percy, and 
similar distinguished persons were present. Moreover, Dr. Gold- 
smith himself was much asked out to dinner too ; and so, not con- 
tent with the " Tyrian bloom, satin grain and garter, blue-silk 
breeches," which Mr. Filby had provided for the evening of the 
production of the comedy, he now had another suit "lined with 
silk, and gold buttons," that he might appear in proper guise. Then 
he had his airs of consequence too. This was his answer to an 
invitation from Kelly, who was his rival of the hour : " I would with 
pleasure accept your kind invitation, but to tell you the truth, my 
dear boy, my Traveller has found me a home in so many places, 
that I am engaged, I believe, three days. Let me see. To-day I 
dine with Edmund Burke, to-morrow with Dr. Nugent, and the 
next day with Topham Beauclerc ; but I'll tell you what I'll do for 
you, I'll dine with you on Saturday." Kelly told this story as 
against Goldsmith; but surely there is not so much ostentation in 
the reply. Directly after Tristra7n Shandy was published, Sterne 
found himself fourteen deep in dinner engagements : why should 
not the author of the Traveller ^.nd the Vicar and the Gnnd-tinftArpA 



68 GOLDSMITH. 

Man have his engagements also ? And perhaps it was but right 
that Mr, Kelly, who was after all only a critic and scribbler, though 
he had written a play which was for the moment enjoying an unde- 
served popularity, should be given to understand that Dr. Gold- 
smith was not to be asked to a hole-and-corner shop at a moment's 
notice. To-day he dines with Mr. Burke ; to-morrow with Dr. 
Nugent ; the day after with Mr. Beauclerc. If you wish to have 
the honour of his company, you may choose a day after that ; and 
then, with his new wig, with his coat of Tyrian bloom and blue-silk 
breeches, with a smart sword at his side, his gold-headed cane in 
his hand, and his hat under his elbow, he will present himself in 
due course. Dr. Goldsmith is announced, and makes his grave 
bow : this is the man of genius about whom all the town is talking ; 
the friend of Burke, of Reynolds, of Johnson, of Hogarth ; this is 
not the ragged Irishman who was some time ago earning a crust by 
running errands for an apothecary. 

Goldsmith's grand airs, however, were assumed but seldom ; 
and they never imposed on anybody. His acquaintances treated him 
with a familiarity which testified rather to his good-nature than to 
their good taste. Now and again, indeed, he was prompted to resent 
this familiarity ; but the effort was not successful. In the " high 
jinks " to which he good-humouredly resorted for the entertainment 
of his guests he permitted a freedom which it was afterwards not 
very easy to discard ; and as he was always ready to make a butt 
of himself for the amusement of his friends and acquaintances, it 
came to be recognized that anybody was allowed to play off a joke 
on " Goldy." The jokes, such of them as have been put on record, 
are of the poorest sort. The horse-collar is never far off. One 
gladly turns from these dismal humours of the tavern and the club 
to the picture of Goldsmith's enjoying what he called a " Shoe- 
maker's Holiday " in the company of one or two chosen intimates. 
Goldsmith, baited and bothered by the wits of a public house, 
became a different being when he had assumed the guidance of a 
small party of chosen friends bent on having a day's frugal pleasure. 
We are indebted to one Cooke, a neighbour of Goldsmith's in the 
Temple, not only for a most interesting description of one of those 
shoemaker's holidays, but also for the knowledge that Goldsmith 
had even now begun writing the Deserted Village, which was not 
published till 1770, two years later. Goldsmith, though he could 
turn out plenty of manufactured stuff for the booksellers, worked 
slowly at the special story or poem with which he meant to " strike 
for honest fame." This Mr. Cooke, calling on him one morning, 
discovered that Goldsmith had that day written these tev» lirie.«= or 
the Deserted Village \ 

" Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, 
How often have I loitered o'er thy green, 
Where humble happiness endeared each scene I 
How often have I paused on every charm, 



GOLDSMITH. 6^ 

The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, 
The never-failing brook, the busy mill, 
^ The decent church, that topt the neighbouring hill, 

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, 
For talking age and whispering lovers made ! " 

" Come," said he, '• let me tell you this is no bad morning's 
work ; and now, my dear boy, if you are not better engaged, 1 
should be glad to enjoy a shoemaker's holiday with you." " A 
shoemaker's holiday," continues the writer of these reminiscences, 
"was a day of great festivity to poor Goldsmith, and was spent in 
the following innocent manner: Three or four of his intimate 
friends rendezvoused at his chambers to breakfast about ten o'clock 
in the morning ; at eleven they proceeded by the City Road and 
through the fields to Highbury Barn to dinner ; about six o'clock 
in the evening they adjourned to White Conduit House to drink 
tea; and concluded by supping at the Grecian or Temple Ex- 
change coffee-house or at the Globe in Fleet Street. There was a 
very good ordinary of two dishes and pastry kept at Highbury 
Barn about this time at tenpence per head, including a penny to 
the waiter ; and the company generally consisted of literary char- 
acters, a few Templars, and some citizens who had left off trade. 
The whole expenses of the day's fete never exceeded a crown, and 
oftener were from three-and-sixpence to four shillings ; for which 
the party obtained good air and exercise, good living, the example 
of simple manners, and good conversation." 

It would have been well indeed for Goldsmith had he been pos- 
sessed of sufficient strength of character to remain satisfied with 
these simple pleasures, and to have lived the quiet and modest life 
of a man of letters on such income as he could derive from the 
best work he could produce. But it is this same Mr. Cooke who 
gives decisive testimony as to Goldsmith's increasing desire to 
"shine" by imitating the expenditure of the great; the natural 
consequence of which was that he only plunged himself into 
a morass of debt, advances, contracts for hack-work, and misery. 
"His debts rendered him at times so melancholy and dejected, 
tliat I am sure he felt himself a very unhappy man." Perhaps it 
was with some sudden resolve to flee from temptation, and grapple 
with the difficulties that beset him, that he, fn conjunction with 
another Temple neighbour. Mr. Bott, rented a cottage some eight 
miles down the Edgware Road ; and here he set to work on the 
History of Ro7ne, which he was writing for Davies. Apart from 
this hack-work, now rendered necessary by his debt, it is probable 
that one strong inducement leading him to this occasional seclusion 
was the progress he might be able to make with the Deserted 
Villai^e. Amid all his town gayeties and country excursions, amid 
his dinners and suppers and dances, his borrowings, and contracts, 
and the hurried literary produce of the moment, he never forgot 
what was due to his reputation as an English poet. The journal- 
istic bullies of the day might vent their spleen and env3' on him ; 



yo GOLDSMITH. 

his best friends might smile at his conversational failures ; the vvils 
of the tavern might put up the horse-collar as before ; but at least 
he had the consolation of his art. No one better knew than him- 
self the value of those finished and musical lines he was gradually 
adding to the beautiful poem, the grace, and sweetness, and tender, 
pathetic charm of which make it one of the literary treasures of the 
English people. 

The sorrows of debt were not Goldsmith's only trouble at this 
time. For some reason or other he seems to have become the 
especial object of spiteful attack on the part of the literary cut- 
throats of the day. And Goldsmith, though he might hsten with 
respect to the wise advice of Johnson on such matters, was never 
able to cultivate Johnson's habit of absolute indifference to any 
thing that might be said or sung of him. "The Kenricks, Camp- 
bells, MacNicols, and Hendersons," says Lord Macaula}-— speak- 
ing of Johnson, "did their best to annoy him, in the hope that he 
would give them importance by answering them. But the reader 
will in vain search his works for any allusion to Kenrick or Camp- 
bell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on vin- 
dicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in 
a detestable Latin hexameter — 

'Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum.' 

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned, 
both from his own observation and from literary history, in which 
he was deeply read, that the place of books in the public estimation 
is fixed, not by what is written about them, but by what is written 
in them ; and that an author whose works are likely to live is very 
unwise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works are 
certain to die. He always maintained tiiat fame was a shuttlecock 
which could be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as 
beaten forward, and which would' soon fall if there were only one 
battledore. No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine 
apophthegm of Bentley. that no man was ever written down but by 
himself." 

It was not given to Goldsmith to feel "like the Monument" on 
' any occasion whatsoever. He was anxious to have the esteem of 
, his friends ; he was sensitive to a degree ; denunciation or malice, 
begotten of envy that Johnson would have passed unheeded, 
wounded him to the quick. " The insults to which he had to 
submit," Thackeray wrote with a quick and warm sympathy, "are 
shocking to read of — slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal 
malignity perverting his commonest motives and actions : he had 
his share of these, and one's anger is roused at reading of them, 
as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child assaulted, at the 
notion that a creature so very gentle, and weak, and full of Jove 
should have had to suffer so." Goldsmith's revenge, his defence 
of himself, his appeal to the public, were the Traveller, the Vicar 
of Wakefield, the Deserted Village; but these came at long inter- 



GOLDSMITH. yi 

vals ; and in the meantime he had to bear with the anonymous 
malignity that pursued him as best he might. No doubt, when 
Burke was entertaining him at dinner, and when Johnson was 
openly deferring to him in conversation at the Club, and when 
Reynolds was painting his portrait, he could afford to forget Mr. 
Kenrick and the rest of the libelling clan. 

The occasions on which Johnson deferred to Goldsmith in con- 
versation were no doubt few ; but at all events the bludgeon of the 
great Cham would appear to have come down less frequently on 
'' honest Goldy " than on the other members of that famous coterie. 
It could come down heavily enough. " Sir," said an incautious 
person, " drinking drives away care, and makes us forget whatever 
is disagreeable. Would not you allow a man to drink for that 
reason 1 " " Yes, sir," was the reply, " if he sat next youy 
Johnson, however, was considerate towards Goldsmith, partly 
because of his affection for him, and partly because he saw under 
what disadvantages Goldsmith entered the lists. For one thing, 
the conversation of those evenings would seem to have drifted con- 
tinually into the mere definition of phrases. Now Johnson had 
spent years of his life, during the compilation of his Dictionary, in 
doing nothing else but defining; and, whenever the dispute took a 
phraseological turn, he had it all his own way. Goldsmith, on the 
other hand, was apt to become confused in his eager self-conscious- 
ness. "Goldsmith," said Johnson to Boswell, "should not be 
forever attempting to shine in conversation ; he has not temper for 
it, he is so much mortified when he fails. . . When he contends, 
if he gets the better, it is a very little addition to a man of his 
literary reputation : if he does not get the better, he is miserably 
vexed." Boswell, nevertheless, admits that Goldsmith was "often 
very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists 
with Johnson himself," and goes on to tell how Goldsmith, relating 
the fable of the little fishes who petitioned Jupiter, and perceiving 
that Johnso-n was laughing at him, immediately said, "Why, Dr. 
Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think ; for if you were 
to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales." Who but 
Goldsmith would have dared' to play jokes on the sage ? At 
supper they have rumps and kidneys. The sage expresses his ap- 
proval of "the pretty little things;" but profoundly observes that 
one must eat a good many of them before being satisfied. "Ay, 
but how many of them," asks Goldsmith, " would reach to the 
moon .f*" The sage professes his ignorance ; and, indeed, remarks 
that that would exceed even Goldsmith's calculations ; when the 
pratical joker observes, " Why, oiie^ sir, if it were long enough." 
Johnson was completely beaten on this occasion. " Well, sir, I 
have deserved it. I should not have provoked so foolish an 
answer by so foolish a question." 

It was Johnson himself, moreover, who told the story of Gold- 
smith and himself being in Poets' Corner; of his saying to Gold- 
smith, 

" Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis,'* 



72 



GOLDSMITH. 



and of Goldsmith subsequently repeating the quotation when, 
having walked towards Fleet Street, they were confronted by the 
heads on Temple Bar. Even when Goldsmith was opinionated 
and wrong, Johnson's contradiction was in a manner gentle. " If 
you put a tub full of blood into a stable, the horses are like to go 
mad," observed Goldsmith. " I doubt that," was Johnson's reply. 
"Nay, sir, it is a fact well authenticated." Here Thrale interposed 
to suggest that Goldsmith should have the experiment tried in the 
stable ; but Johnson merely said that, if Goldsmith began making 
these experiments, he would never get his book written at all. 
Occasionally, of course. Goldsmith was tossed and gored just like 
another. "But, sir," he had ventured to sa}', in opposition to 
Johnson, '• when people live together who have something as to 
which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in 
the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard, ' You may look 
into all the chambers but one.' But we should have the greatest 
inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject." 
Here, according to Boswell, Johnson answered in a loud voice, 
" Sir, I am not saying that you could live in friendship with a man 
from whom you differ as to one point ; I am only saying that 1 
could do it." But then again he could easily obtain pardon from 
the gentle Goldsmith for any occasional rudeness. One evening 
they had a sharp passage of arms at dinner; and thereafter the 
company adjourned to the Club, where Goldsmith sat silent and 
depressed. "Johnson perceived this," says Boswell, "and said 
aside to some of us, ' I'll make Goldsmith forgive me ; ' and then 
called to him in a loud voice, ' Dr. Goldsmith, something passed 
to-day where you and I dined : I ask your pardon.' Goldsmith 
answered placidly, ' It must be much from you, sir, that I take ill.' 
And so at once the difference was over, and they were on as easy 
terms as ever, and Goldsmith rattled away as usual." For the 
rest, Johnson was the constant and doughty champion of Goldsmith 
as a man of letters. He would suffer no one to doubt the power 
and versatility of that genius which he had been amongst the first 
to recognize and encourage. 

"Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, as a comic writer, or 
as an historian," he announced to an assemblage of distinguished 
persons met together at dinner at Mr. Beauclerc's, " he stands in 
the first classy And there was no one living who dared dispute 
the verdict — at least in Johnson's hearing. 



GOLDSMITH, 



73 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 

But it is time to return to the literary performances that gained 
for this uncouth Irishman so great an amount of consideration 
from the first men of his time. The engagement with Griffin 
about tht History of Animated Nature was made at the beginning 
of 1769. The work was to occupy eight volumes; and Dr. Gold- 
smith was to receive eight hundred guineas for the complete copy- 
right. Whether the undertaking was originally a suggestion of 
Griffin's, or of Goldsmith's own, does not appear. If it was the 
author's, it was probably only the first means that occurred to him 
of getting another advance ; and that advance — ^500 on account — 
he did actually get. But if it was the suggestion of the publisher, 
Griffin must have been a bold man. A writer whose acquaintance 
with animated nature was such as to allow him to make the "insid- 
ious tiger " a denizen of the backwoods of Canada,* was not a 
very safe authority. But perhaps Griffin had consulted Johnson 
before making this bargain; and we know that Johnson, though 
continually remarking on Goldsmith's extraordinary ignorance of 
facts, was of opinion that the History of A7ii7?iated Nature would 
be " as entertaining as a Persian tale." However, Goldsmith — no 
doubt after he had spent the five hundred guineas — tackled the 
work in earnest. When Boswell subsequently went out to call on 
him at another rural retreat he had taken on the Edgware Road, 
Boswell and Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, found Goldsmith 
from home ; " but, having a curiosity to see his apartment, we went 
in and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled 
upon the wall with a black-lead pencil." Meanwhile, this Animated 
Nature being in hand, the Roman History was published, and was 
very well received by the critics and by the public. " Goldsmith's 
abridgment," Johnson declared, " is better than that of Lucius 
Florus or Eutropius; and I will venture to say that if you com- 
pare him with Vertot, in the same places of the Roman History^ 
you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the art of compil- 
ing, and of saying everything he has to say in a pleasing manner." 

So thought the booksellers too ; and the success of the Roman 

* See Citizen of the Worlds L,etter XVII, 



74 



GOLDSMITH. 



History only involved him in fresh projects of compilation. By an 
offer of ^500 Davies induced him to lay aside for the moment the 
Atiimated Nature 2iXi6. begin " An History of England, from the 
Birth of the British Empire to the death of George the Second, in 
four volumes octavo." He also about this time undertook to write 
a Life of Thomas Parnell. Here, indeed, was plenty of v»'ork, and 
work promising good pay; but the depressing thing is that Gold- 
smith should have been the man who had to do it. He may have 
done it better than any one else could have done — indeed, looking 
over the results of all that drudgery, we recognize now the happy 
turns of expression which were never long absent from Goldsmith's 
prose-writing — but the world could well afford to sacrifice all the 
task-work thus got through for another poem like the Dese7'ted 
Villao^e or the T?'aveller. Perhaps Goldsmith considered he was 
making a fair compromise when, for the sake of his reputation, he 
devoted a certain portion of his time to his poetical work, and then, 
to have money for fine clothes and high jinks, gave the rest to the 
booksellers. One critic, on the appearance oixho. Ro?na?i History^ 
referred to the Traveller, and remarked that it was a pity that the 
" author of one of the best poems that has appeared since those of 
Ml. Pope, should not apply v/holly to works of imagination." We 
may echo that regret now ; but Goldsmith would at the time have 
no doubt replied that, if he had trusted to his poems, he would 
never have been able to pay ^^400 for chambers in the Temple. 
In fact he said as much to Lord Lisburn at one of the Academy 
dinners : •' I cannot afford to court the draggle-tail muses, my 
Lord; they would let me starve; but by my other labours I can 
make shift to eat, and drink, and have good clothes." And there is 
little use in our regretting now that Goldsmith was not cast in a 
more heroic mould ; we have to take him as he is ; and be grateful 
for what he has left us. 

It is a grateful relief to turn from these booksellers' contracts 
and forced labours to the sweet clear note of singfins^ that one 
finds in the Deserted Village. This poem, after having been 
repeatedly announced and as often withdrawn for further revision, 
was at last published on the 26th of May, 1770, when Goldsmith 
was in his forty-second year. The leading idea of it he had 
already thrown out in certain lines in the Traveller : 

" Have we not seen, round Britain's peopled shore, 
Her useful sons exchanged for useless ore .-' 
Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste, 
Like flaring tapers brightening as they waste ? 
Seen opulence, her grandeur to maintain, 
Lead stern depopulation in her train, 
And over fields where scattered hamlets ros 
In barren solitary pomp repose ? 
Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly call 
The smiling long-frequented village fall ? 
Beheld the duteous son, the sire decayed, 
The modest matron, and the blushing maid, 



GOLDSMITH. 



75 



Forced from their homes, a melancholy train, 
To traverse climes beyond the western main; 
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around. 
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound ? " 

— and elsewhere, in recorded conversations of his, we find that he 
had somehow got it into his head that the accumulation of wealth 
in a country was the parent of all evils, including depopulation. 
We need not stay here to discuss Goldsmith's position as apolitical 
economist ; even although Johnson seems to sanction his theory 
in the four lines he contributed to the end of the poem. Nor is it 
worth while returning to that objection of Lord Macaulay's which 
has already been mentioned in these pages, further than to repeat 
that the poor Irish village in which Goldsmith was brought up, no 
doubt looked to him as charming as any Auburn, when he regarded 
it through the softening and beautifying mist of years. It is 
enough that the abandonment by a number of poor people of the 
homes in which they and theirs have lived their lives, is one of the 
most pathetic facts in our civilisation ; and that out of the various 
circumstances surrounding this forced migration Goldsmith has 
made one of the most graceful and touching poems in the English 
language. It is clear bird-singing; but there is a pathetic note in 
it. That imaginary ramble through the Lissoy that is far away has 
recalled more than his boyish sports ; it has made him look back 
over his own life — the life of an exile. 

*'I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 

Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; 

To husband out life's taper at the close, 

And keep the flamG from wasting by repose : 
• I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 

Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, 

Around my fire an evening group to draw, 

And tell of all I felt, and all I saw; 

And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue 

Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, 

I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 

Here to return — and die at home at last." 

Who can doubt that it was of Lissoy he was thinking ? Sir Walter 
Scott, writing a generation ago, said that "the church which tops the 
neighbouring hill," the mill and the brook were still to be seen in 
the Irish village ; and that even 

" The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade- 
For talking age and whispering lovers made," 

had been identified by the indefatigable tourist, and was oi course 
being cut to pieces to make souvenirs. But indeed it is of little 
consequence whether we say that Auburn is an English village, or 
insist that it is only Lissoy idealised, as long as the thing is true in 
itself. And we know that this is true : it is not that one sees the 



76 VOLDSMITIL 

place as a picture, but that one seems to be breathing its very 
atmosphere, and listening to the various cries that thrill the " hol- 
low silence." 

" Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 
There, as I past with careless steps and slow, 
The mingling notes came softened from below ; 
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, 
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young, 
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 
The playful children just let loose from school, 
The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, 
And the loud laugh that spake the vacant mind." 

Nor is it any romantic and impossible peasantry that is grad- 
ually brought before us. There are no Norvals in Lissoy. There 
is the old woman — Catherine Geraghty, they say, was her name — 
who gathered cresses in the ditches near her cabin. There is the 
village preacher whom Mrs. Hodson, Goldsmith's sister, took to 
be a portrait of their father; but whom others have identified as 
Henry Goldsmith, and even as the uncle Contarine : they may all 
have contributed. And then comes Paddy Byrne. Amid all the 
pensive tenderness of the poem this description of the school- 
master, with its strokes of demure humour, is introduced with 
delightful effect : 

" Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, 
There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, 
The village master taught his little school. 
A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew : 
"Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper circling round 
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned 
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, 
The love he bore to learning was in fault : 
The village all declared how much he knew: 
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too: 
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge : 
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill ; 
For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still ; 
While words of learned length and thundering sound 
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; 
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew 
That one small head could carry all he knew." 

All this is so simple and natural that we cannot fail to believe in 



GOLDSMITH. 



11 



the reality of Auburn, or Lissoy, or whatever the village may be 
supposed to be. We visit the clergyman's cheerful fireside ; and 
look in on the noisy school; and sit in the evening in the ale-house 
to listen to the profound politics talked there. But the crisis 
comes. Auburn delenda est. Here, no doubt, occurs the least 
probable part of the poem. Poverty of soil is a common cause of 
emigration : land that produces oats (when it can produce oats at 
all) three-fourtlis mixed with weeds, and hay chiefly consisting of 
rushes, naturally discharges its surplus population as families in- 
crease ; and tliough the wrench of parting is painful enough, the 
usual result is a change from starvation to competence. It more 
rarely happens that a district of peace and plenty, such as Auburn 
was supposed to see around it, is depopulated to add to a great 
man's estate. 

"The man of wealth and pride 
Takes up a space that many poor supplied ; 
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds : 
******* 

His seat, where solitary sports are seen, 
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ; " 

and so forth. This seldom happens ; but it does happen ; and it 
has happened, in our own day, in England. It is within the last 
twenty-years that an English landlord, having faith in his riches, 
bade a Village be removed and cast elsewhere, so that it should no 
longer be visible from his windows : and it was forthwith removed. 
But any solitary instance like this is not sufficient to support the 
theory that wealth and luxury are inimical to the existence of a 
bardy peasantiy : and so we must admit, after all, that it is poetical 
'exigency rather than political economy that has decreed the 
destruction of the loveliest village of the plain. Where, asks the 
poet, are the driven poor to find refuge, when even the fenceless 
commons are seized upon and divided by the rich } In the great 
cities ? — 

" To see profusion that we must not share ; 
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined 
To pamper luxury and thin mankind." 

It is in this description of a life in cities that there occurs an often- 
quoted passage, which has in it one of the most perfect lines in 
English poetry : 

" Ah ! turn thine eyes 
Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, 
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest ; 
■ Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn ; 



yg . GOLDSMITH. 

Now lost to all ; her friends, her virtue fled, 

Near her betrayer's door she lays her head. 

And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, 

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, 

When idly first, ambitious of the town. 

She left her wheel and robes of country brown " 

Goldsmith wrote in a pre-Wordsworthian age, when, even in 
the realms of poetry, a primrose was not much more than a prim- 
rose ; but it is doubtful whether, c" ' r before, during, or since 
Wordsworth's time, the sentiment X^.~.i tha imagination can infuse 
into the common and familiar things around us ever received more 
happy expression than in the well-known line, 

" Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorii^ 

No one has as yet succeeded in defining accurately and concisely 
what poetry is ; but at all events this line is surcharged with a 
certain quality which is conspicuously absent in such a produc- 
tion as the Essay on Man. Another similar line is to be found 
further on in the description of the distant scenes to which the 
proscribed people are driven : 

" Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, 
Where wild Alta^na nmrmiirs to their woe.'''' 

Indeed, the pathetic side of emigration has never been so power- 
fully presented to us as in this poem : 

" When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 

Hung round the bovvers, and fondly looked their last, 

And took a long farewell, and wished in vain 

For seats like these beyond the western main, 

And shuddering still to face the distant deep. 

Returned and wept, and still returned to weep. 
* * * . * * * 

Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, 

I see the rural virtues leave the land. 

Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail, 

That idly waiting flaps with every gale, 

Downward they move a melancholy band. 

Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. 

Contented toil, and hospitable care. 

And kind connubial tenderness are there ; 

And piety with wishes placed above. 

And steady loyalty, and faithful love." 

And worst of all. in this imaginative departure, we find that Poetry 
herself is leaving our shores. She is now to try her voice 

" On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side ; " 

and the poet, in the closing lines of the poem, bids her a passionate 
and tender farewell : 



GOLDSMITH. yn 

" And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid, 
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ; 
Unfit in these degenerate times of shame 
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 
Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried, 
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride ; 
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe, 
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ; 
Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, 
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well ! 
Farewell, and oh ! where'er thy voice be tried. 
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side. 
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow. 
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time, 
Redress the rigours of the inclement clime : 
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain ; 
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain : 
Teach him, that states of native strength possest. 
Though very poor, may still be very blest ; 
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, 
As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away ; 
While self-dependent power can time defy. 
As rocks resist the billows and the sky." 

So ends this graceful, melodious, tender poem, the position of 
which in English literature, and in the estimation of all who love 
English literature, has not been disturbed by any fluctuations of 
literary fashion. We may give more attention at the moment to 
the new experiments of the poetic method ; but we return only with 
renewed gratitude to the old familiar strain, not the least merit of 
which is that it has nothing about it of foreign tricks or graces. In 
English literature there is nothing more thoroughly English than 
th^se writings produced by an Irishman. And whether or not it 
was Paddy Byrne, and Catherine Geraghty, and the Lissoy ale-house 
that Goldsmith had in his mind when he was writing the poem, is 
not of much consequence : the manner and language and feeling 
are all essentially English ; so that we never think of calling Gold- 
smith anything but an English poet. 

The poem met with great and immediate success. Of course 
every thing that Dr. Goldsmith now wrote was read by the public ; 
he had not to wait for the recommendation of the reviews ; but, in 
this case, even the reviews had scarcely any thing but praise in the 
welcome of his new book. It was dedicated, in graceful and inge- 
nious terms, to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who returned the compliment 
by painting a picture and placing on the engraving of it this in- 
scription : " This attempt to express a character in the Deserted 
Village is dedicated to Dr. Goldsmith by his sincere friend and 
admirer. Sir Joshua Reynolds." What Goldsmith got from Grif- 
fin for the poem is not accurately known ; and this is a misfortune, 
for the knowledge would have enabled us to judge whether at that 
tinie it was possible for a poet to court the draggle-tail muses with- 



8o GOLDSMITH. 

out risk of starvation. But if fame were his chief object in the 
composition of the poem, he was sufficiently rewarded ; and it is to 
be surmised that by this time the people in Ireland — no longer im- 
plored to get subscribers — had heard of the proud position won by 
the vagrant youth who had " taken the world for his pillow " some 
eighteen years before. 

That his own thoughts had sometimes wandered back to the 
scenes and friends of his youth during this labour of love, we know 
from his letters. In January o£ this year, while as yet the Deserted 
Village was not quite through the press, he wrote to his brother 
Maurice ; and expressed himself as most anxious to hear all about 
the relatives from whom he had been so long parted. He has 
something to say about himself too ; wishes it to be known that 
the King "has lately been pleased to make him Professor of Ancient 
History " in a Royal Academy of Painting which he has just 
established ; " but gives no very flourishing account of his circum- 
stances. " Honours to one in my situation are something like 
ruffles to a man that wants a shirt." However, there is some small 
legacy of fourteen or fifteen pounds left him by his uncle Contarine, 
which he understands to be in the keeping of his cousin Lawder ; 
and to this wealth he is desirous of foregoing all claim : his rela- 
tions must settle how it may be best expended. But there is not 
a reference to his literary achievements, or the position won by 
them ; not the slightest yielding to even a pardonable vanity ; it is 
a modest, affectionate letter. The only hint that Maurice Gold- 
smith receives of the esteem in which his brother is held in Lon- 
don, is contained in a brief mention of Johnson, Burke, and others 
as his friends. " I have sent my cousin Jenny a miniature picture 
of myself, as I believe it is the most acceptable present I can 
offer. I have ordered it to be left for her at George Faulkenor's, 
folded in a letter. The face, you well know, is ugly enough ; but 
it is finely painted. I will shortly also send my friends over the 
Shannon some mezzotinto prints of myself, and some more of my 
friends here, such as Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, and Colman. I 
believe I have written an hundred letters to different friends in 
your country, and never received an answer from any of them. I 
do not know how to account for this, or why they are unwilling to 
keep up for me those regards which I must ever retain for them." 
The letter winds up with an appeal for news, news, news. 



GOLDSMITH^ 3s 



CHAPTER XV. 

OCCASIONAL WRITINGS. 

Some two months after the publication of the Deserted Villagg, 
when its success had been well assured, Goldsmith proposed to 
himself the relaxation of a little Continental tour; and he was ac- 
companied by three ladies, Mrs. Horneck and her two pretty- 
daughters, who doubtless took more charge of him than he did of 
them. This Mrs. Horneck, the widow of a certain Captain Hor- 
neck, was connected with Reynolds, while Burke was the guardian 
of the two girls ; so that it was natural that they should make the 
acquaintance of Dr. Goldsmith. A foolish attempt has been made 
to weave out of the relations supposed to exist between the younger 
of the girls and Goldsmith an imaginary romance ; but there is not 
the slightest actual foundation for anything of the kind. Indeed 
the best guide we can have to the friendly and familiar terms on 
which he stood with regard to the Hornecks and their circle, is the 
following careless and jocular reply to a chance invitation sent him 
by the two sisters : 

" Your mandate I got, 
You may all go to pot ; 
Had your senses been right, 
You'd have sent before night; 
As I hope to be saved, 
I put off being shaved; 
For I could not make bold, 
While the matter was cold, 
To meddle in suds. 
Or to put on my duds ; 
So tell Horneck and Nesbitt 
And Baker and his bit, 
And Kauffman beside, 
And the Jessamy bride ; 
With the rest of the crew 
The Reynoldses two, 
Little Comedy's face 
And the Captain in lace. 

*p *!* * ^ 

Yet how can I when vext 
Thus stray from my text ? 



82 GOLDSMITH. 

Tell each other to rue 

Your Devonshire crew, 

For sending so late 

To one of my state. 

But 'tis Reynolds's way 

From wisdom to stray, 

And Angelica's whim 

To be frolic like him. 
But, alas ! your good worships, how could they be wiser. 
When both have been spoiled in to-day's Advertiser V^ 



" The Jessamy Bride " was the pet nickname he had bestowed 
on the younger Miss Horneck — the heroine of the speculative 
romance just mentioned; "Little Comedy" was her sister; "the 
Captain in lace " their brother, who was in the Guards. No doubt 
Mrs. Horneck and her daughters were very pleased to have with 
them on this Continental trip so distinguished a person as Dr. 
Goldsmith ; and he must have been very ungrateful if he was not 
glad to be provided with such charming companions. The story 
of the sudden envy he displayed of the admiration excited by the 
two handsome young Englishwomen as they stood at a hotel-win- 
dow in Lille, is so incredibly foolish that it needs scarcely be re- 
peated here; unless to lepeat the warning that, if ever anybody 
was so dense as not to see the humour of that piece of acting, one 
had better look with grave suspicion on every one of the stories 
told about Goldsmith's vanities and absurdities. 

Even with such pleasant companions, the trip to Paris was not 
every thing he had hoped. " I find," he wrote to Reynolds from 
Paris, " that travelling at twenty and at forty are very different 
things. I set out with all my confirmed habits about me, and can 
find nothing on the Continent so good as when 1 formerly left it. 
One of our chief amusements here is scolding at every thing we 
meet with, and praising everything and every person we left at 
home. You may judge therefore whether your name is not fre- 
quently bandied at table among us. To tell you the truth, I never 
thought I could regret your absence so much, as our various mor- 
tifications on the road have often taught me to do. I could tell 
you of disasters and adventures without number, of our lying in 
barns, and my being half poisoned with a dish of green peas, of 
our quarrelling with postilions and being cheated by our landladies, 
but I reserve all this for a happy hour which I expect to share 
with you upon my return." The fact is that although Goldsmith 
had seen a good deal of foreign travel, the manner of his making 
the grand tour in his youth was not such as to fit him for acting 
as courier to a party of ladies. However, if they increased his 
troubles, they also shared them; and in this same letter he bears 
explicit testimony to the value of their companionship. " I will 
soon be among you, better pleased with my situation at home than 
I ever was before. And yet I must say, that if any thing could 
make France pleasant, the very good women with whom I am at 



GOLDSMITH. 83 

present would certainly do it. I could say more about that, but I 
intend showing them this letter before I send it away." Mrs. 
Horneck, Little Comedy, the Jessamy Bride, and the Professor of 
Ancient History at the Royal Academy, all returned to London ; 
the last to resume his round of convivialities at taverns, excursions 
into regions of more fashionable amusement along with Reynolds, 
und task-work aimed at the pockets of the booksellers. 

It was a happy-go-lucky sort of life. We find him now showing 
off his fine clothes and his sword and wig at Ranelagh Gardens, 
and again shut up in his chambers compiling memoirs and histories 
in hot haste; now the guest of Lord Clare, and figuring at Bath, 
and again delighting some small domestic circle by his quips and 
cranks; playing jokes for the amusement of children, and writing 
comic letters in verse to their elders ; everywhere and at all times 
merry, thoughtless, good-natured. And, of course, we find also 
his humorous pleasantries being mistaken for blundering stu- 
pidity. In perfect good faith Boswell describes how a number of 
people burst out laughing when Goldsmith publicly complained 
that he had met Lord Camden at Lord Clare's house in the coun- 
try, "and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an 
ordinary man." Goldsmith's claiming to be a very extraordinary 
person was precisely a stroke of that humorous self-depreciation 
in which he was continually indulging; and the Jessamy Bride has 
left it on record that "on many occasions, from the peculiar man- 
ner of his humour, and assumed frown of countenance, what was 
often uttered in jest was mistaken by those who did not know him for 
earnest." This would appear to have been one of those occasions. 
The company burst out laughing at Goldsmith's having made a 
fool of himself ; and Johnson was compelled to come to his rescue. 
" Nay, gentlemen. Dr. Goldsmith is in the right. A nobleman 
ought to have made up to such a man as Goldsmith ; and I think 
it is much against Lord Camden that he neglected him." 

Mention of Lord Clare naturally recalls the Haujtch of Venison. 
Goldsmith was particularly happy in writing bright and airy verses ; 
the grace and lightness of his touch has rarely been approached. 
It must be confessed, however, that in this direction he was some- 
what of an Autolycus ; unconsidered trifles he freely appropriated ; 
but he committed these thefts with scarcely any concealment, and 
with the most charming air in the world. In fact some of the 
snatches of verse which he contributed to the Bee scarcely profess 
to be anything else than translations, though the originals are not 
given. But who is likely to complain when we get as the result 
such a delightful piece of nonsense as the famous Elegy on that 
Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary Blaize, which has been the parent of 
a vast progeny since Goldsmith's time ? 

"Good people all, with one accord 
Lament for Madam Blaize, 
Who never wanted a good word 
From those who spoke her praise. 



84 



GOLDSMITH. 

" The needy seldom passed her door, 
And always found her kind ; 
She freely lent to all the poor — 
Who left a pledge behind. 

" She strove the neighbourhood to please. 
With manners wondrous winning ; 
And never followed wicked ways — 
Unless when she was sinning. 

" At church, in silks and satins new, 
With hoop of monstrous size. 
She never slumbered in her pew — 
But when she shut her eyes. 

" Her love was sought, I do aver, 
By twenty beaux and more ; 
The king himself has followed her 
When she has walked before. 

" But now her wealth and finery fled, 
Her hangers-on cut short all ; 
The Doctors found, when she was dead — 
Her last disorder mortal. 

" Let us lament, in sorrow sore, 
For Kent Street well may say, 
That had she lived a twelvemonth more — 
She had not died to-day." 

The Haunch of Venison, on the other hand, is a poetical letter 
of thanks to Lord Clare— an easy, jocular epistle, in which the 
writer has a cut or two at certain of his literary brethren. Then, 
as he is looking at the venison, and determining not to send it to 
any such people as Hiffernan or Higgins, who should step in but 
our old friend Beau Tibbs, or some one remarkably like him in 
manner and speech ? — 

" While thus I debated, in reverie centred, 
An acquaintance, a friend as he called himself, entered 
An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow was he, 
And he smiled as he looked at the venison and me. 

* What have we got here ? — Why this is good eating ! 
Your own, I suppose — or is it in waiting ? ' 

* Why, whose should it be ? ' cried I with a flounce; 

* I get these things often ' — but that was a bounce : 

* Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation, 
Are pleased to be kind — but I hate ostentation.' 

* If that be the case then,' cried he, very gay, 

* I'm glad to have taken this house in my way. 
To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me ; 
No words — I insist on't — precisely at three : 

We'll have Johnson, and Burke ; all the wits will be there 
My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare. 



GOLDSMITH. 85 

And now that I think on't, as I am a sinner ! 
We wanted this venison to make out the dinner. 
What say you — a pasty ? It shall, and it must, 
And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust. 
Here, porter ! this venison with me to Mile End ; 
Nor stirring — I beg — my dear friend — my dear friend ! 
Thus, snatching his hat, he brushed off like the wind, 
And the porter and eatables followed behind." 

We need not follow the vanished venison — which did not make its 
appearance at the banquet any more than did Johnson or Burke — 
further than to say that if Lord Clare did not make it good to the 
poet he did not deserve to have his name associated with such a 
clever and careless y<??^ d" esprit. 



86 GOLDSMITH, 



CHAPTER XVI. 

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 

But the writing of smart verses could not keep Dr. Goldsmith 
alive, more especially as dinner-parties, Ranelagh masquerades, 
and similar diversions pressed heavily on his finances. When his 
History of England appeared, the literary cutthroats of the day 
accused him of having been bribed by the Government to betray 
the liberties of the people : * a foolish charge. What Goldsmith 
got for the English History was the sum originally stipulated for, 
and now no doubt all spent ; with a further sum of fifty guineas for 
an abridgment of the work. Then, by this time, he had persuaded 
Griffin to advance him the whole of the eight hundred guineas for 
the Animated Nature, though he had only done about a third part 
of the book. At the instigation of Newbery he had begun a story 
after the manner of the Vicar of Wakefield ; but it appears that 
such chapters as he had written were not deemed to be promising; 
and the undertaking was abandoned. The fact is. Goldsmith was 
now thinking of another method of replenishing his purse. The 
Vicar of Wakefield had brought him little but reputation ; the Good- 
?tatnred Ma?i had brought him ^500. It was to the stage that he 
now looked for assistance out of the financial slough in which he 
was plunged. He was engaged in writing a comedy; and that 
comedy was She Stoops to Conquer. 

In the Dedication to Johnson which was prefixed to this play 
on its appearance in type. Goldsmith hints that the attempt to write 
a comedy not of the sentimental order then in fashion, was a 
hazardous thing ; and also that Colman, who saw the piece in its 
various stages, was of this opinion too. Colman threw cold water 
on the undertaking from the very beginning. It was only extreme 
pressure on the part of Goldsmith's friends that induced — or rather 
compelled — him to accept the comedy ; and that, after he had kept 
the unfortunate author in the tortures of suspense for month after 
month. But although Goldsmith knew the danger, he was re- 
solved to face it. He hated the sentimentalists and all their works ; 
and determined to keep his new comedy faithful to nature, whether 

* " God knows I had no thought for or against liberty in my head ; my whole aim 
being to make up a book of a decent size that, as Squire Richard says, ' would do no harm 
to nobody.' " — Goldsmith to Langton, September, 1771- 



GOLDSMITH. 87 

people called it low or not. His object was to raise a genuine, 
hearty laugh ; not to write a piece for school declamation ; and he 
had enough confidence in himself to do the work in his own way. 
Moreover he took the earliest possible opportunity, in writing this 
piece, of poking fun at the sensitive creatures who had been 
shocked by the "vulgarity " of The Good-natured Man. " Bravo ! 
Bravo ! " cry the jolly companions of Tony Lumpkin, when that 
promising buckeen has finished his song at the Three Pigeons ; 
then follows criticism : 

" First Fellow. The squire has got spunk in him. 

" Second Fel. I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us 
nothins; that's low. 

" Third Fel. O damn any thing that's low, I cannot bear it. 

" Fourth Fel. The genteel thing is the genteel thing any dme : if so be 
that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly. 

" third Fel. I likes the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What, though 
I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. 
May this be my poison, if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest 
of tunes ; ' Water Parted,' or the * The Minuet in Ariadne.' " 

Indeed, Goldsmith, however he might figure in society, was 
always capable of holding his own when he had his pen in his 
hand. And even at the outset of this comedy one sees how much 
he has gained in literary confidence since the writing of the Good- 
natured Man. Here there is no anxious stiffness at all ; but a 
brisk, free conversation, full of point that is not too formal, and yet 
conveying all the information that has usually to be crammed into 
a first scene. In taking as the groundwork of his plot that old ad- 
venture that had befallen himself — his mistaking a squire's house 
for an inn — he was hampering himself with something that was not 
the less improbable because it had actually happened ; but we 
begin to forget all the improbabilities through the naturalness of 
the people to whom we are introduced, and the brisk movement and 
life of the piece. 

Fashions in dramatic literature may come and go ; but the 
wholesome good-natured fun of She Stoops to Conquer is as 
capable of producing a hearty laugh now as it was when it first saw 
the light in Covent Garden. Tony Lumpkin is one of the especial 
favourites of the theatregoing public ; and no wonder. With all 
the young cub's jibes and jeers, his impudence and grimaces, one 
has a sneaking love for the scapegrace ; we laugh with him, rather 
than at him ; how can we fail to enjoy those malevolent tricks of 
his when he so obviously enjoys them himself .'' And Diggory — 
do we not owe an eternal debt of gratitude to honest Diggory for 
telling us about Ould Grouse in the gunroom, that immortal joke 
at which thousands and thousands of people have roared with 
laughter, though they never any one of them could tell what the 
story was about ? The scene in which the old squire lectures his 
faithful attendants on their manners and duties, is one of the truest 
bits of comedy on the English stage : 



38 GOLDSMITH. 

" Mr. I/ardcasllc. But you're not to stand so, with your hands in your 
pockets, 'lake your hands from your pockets, Roger ; and from your 
head, you blockhead you. See how Diggory carries his hands. They're 
a little too stiff, indeed, but that's no great matter. 

" ^^vf^O'* -^Y' "^i'ld how I hold them. I learned to hold my hands 
this way' when I was upon drill for the militia. And so being upon 
drill 

" Hard. You must not be so talkative, Diggory. You must be all 
attention to the guests. You must hear us talk, and not think of talking ; 
you must see us drink, and not think of drinking ; you must see us eat, 
and not think of eating, 

''^ Dig. By the laws, your worship, that's parfectly unpossible. When- 
ever Diggory sees yeating going forward, ecod, he's always wishing for a- 
mouthful himself. 

"■Hard. Blockhead! Is not a bellyful in the kitchen as good as a 
bellyful in the parlor } Stay your stomach with that reflection. 

'"Dig. Ecod, I thank your worship, I'll make a shift to stay my 
stomach with a slice of cold beef in the pantry. 

" Hard. Diggory, you are too talkative. — Then, if I happen to say a 
good thing, or tell a good story at table, you must not all burst out a- 
laughing, as if you made part of the company. 

'* Dig. Then ecod your worship must not tell the story of Ould Grouse 
in the gunroom ; I can't help laughing at that — he ! he ! he ! — for the soul 
of me. We have laughed at that these twenty years — ha ! ha ! ha ! 

"■Hard. Ha! ha! ha! The story is a good one. Well, honest Dig- 
gory, you may laugh at that — but still remember to be attentive. Suppose 
one of the company should call for a glass of wine, how will you behave ? 
A glass of wine, sir, if you please [to Diggory). — Eh, v.'hy don't you 
move ? 

" Dig. Ecod, your worship, I never have courage till I see the eatables 
and drinkables brought upo' the table, and then I'm as bauld as a lion. 

" Hard. What, will nobody move .'' 

" First Serv. I'm not to leave this pleace. 

" Second Serv. I'm sure it's no pleace of mine. 

" Third Serv. Nor mine, for sartain. 

" Dig. Wauns, and I'm sure it canna be mine." 

No doubt all this is very "low" indeed; and perhaps Mr. 
Colman may be forgiven for suspecting that the refined wits of the 
day would be shocked by these rude humours of a parcel of ser- 
vants. But all that can be said in this direction was said at the 
time by Horace Walpole, in a letter to a friend of his; and this 
criticism is so amusing in its pretence and imbecility that it is 
worth quoting at large. " Dr. Goldsmith has written a comedy," 
says this profound critic, " — no, it is the lowest of all farces ; it is 
Inot the subject I condemn, though very vulgar, but the execution. 
The drift tends to no moral, no edification of any kind — the 
situations, however, are well imagined, and make one laugh in spite 
of the grossness of the dialogue, the forced witticisms, and total 
improbability of the whole plan and conduct. But what disgusts 
me most is, that though the characters are very low, and aim at low 
humour, not one of them says a sentence that is natural, or mark.s 
any character at all." Horace Walpole sighing for edification — 



GOLDSMITH. 



89 



from a Covent Garden comedy ! Surely, if the old gods have any 
jaughter left, and if they take any notice of what is done in the 
literary world here below, there must have rumbled through the 
courts of Olympus a guffaw of sardonic laughter when that solemn 
criticism was put down on paper. 

Meanwhile Colman's original fears had developed into a sort of 
stupid obstinacy. He was so convinced that the play would not 
succeed, ihat he would spend no money in putting it on the 
stage ; while far and wide he announced its failure as a foregone 
conclusion. Under this gloom of vaticination the rehearsals were 
nevertheless proceeded with — the brunt of the quarrels among the 
players falling wholly on Goldsmith, for the manager seems to have 
withdrawn in despair ; while all the Johnson confraternity were 
determined to do what they could for Goldsmith on the opening 
night. That was the 15th of March, 1773. His friends invited the 
.iLithor to dinner as a prelude to the play ; Dr. Johnson was in the 
chair; there was plenty of gaiety. But this means of keeping up 
'.he anxious author's spirits was not very successful. Goldsmith's 
mouth, we are told by Reynolds, became so parched " from the 
e.gitation of his mind, that he was unable to swallow a single 
mouthful." Moreover, he could not face the ordeal of sitting 
through the play ; when his friends left the tavern and betook 
themselves to the theatre, he went away by himself ; and was sub- 
^equently found walking in St. James's Park. The friend who dis- 
covered him there persuaded him that his presence in the theatre 
might be useful in case of an emergency ; and ultimately got him 
to accompany him to Covent Garden. When Goldsmith reached 
the theatre, the fifth act had been begun. 

Oddly enough, the first thing he heard on entering the stage- 
door was a hiss. The story goes that the poor author was dread- 
fully frightened ; and that in answer to a hurried question, Colman 
exclaimed, " Psha ! Doctor, don't be afraid of a squib, when we 
have been sitting these two hours on a barrel of gunpowder." If 
this was meant as a hoax, it was a cruel one ; if meant seriously, it 
was untrue. For the piece had turned out a great hit. From 
beginning to end of the performance the audience were in a roar of 
laughter ; and the single hiss that Goldsmith unluckily heard was 
so markedly exceptional, that it became the talk of the town, and 
was variously attributed to one or other of Goldsmith's rivals. 
Colman, too, suffered at the hands of the wits for his gloomy and 
falsified predictions ; and had, indeed, to beg Goldsmith to intercede 
for him. It is a great pity that Boswell was not in London at this 
time ; for then we might have had a description of the supper 
that naturally would follow the play, and of Goldsmith's demeanour 
under this new success. Besides the gratification, moreover, of his 
choice of materials being approved by the public, there was the 
material benefit accruing to him from the three " author's nights." 
These are supposed to have produced nearly five hundred pounds 
— a substantial sum in those days. 



go GOLDSMITH. 

Boswell did not come to London till the second of April following 
and the first mention we find of Goldsmith is in connection wit! 
an incident which has its ludicrous as well as its regrettable aspect 
The further success of She Stoops to Congiie?' v{a.s not likely to pro 
pitiate the wretched hole-and-corner cutthroats that infested the 
journalism of that day. More especially was Kenrick driven mac 
with envy; and so, in a letter addressed to the London Packet, thij 
poor creature determined once more to set aside the judgment o 
the pubhc, and show Dr. Goldsmith in his true colours. The let 
ter is a wretched production, full of personalities only fit for ar 
angry washerwoman, and of rancour without point. But there waj 
one passage in it that effectually roused Goldsmith's rage ; foi 
here the Jessamy Bride was introduced as "the lovely H — k.' 
The letter was anonymous ; but th3 publisher of the print, a mar 
called Evans, was known ; and so Goldsmith thought he would gc 
and give Evans a beating. If he had asked Johnson's advice 
about the matter, he would no doubt have been told to pay no heec 
at all to anonymous scurrility — certainly not to attempt to reply tc 
it with a cudgel. When Johnson heard that Foote meant to " take 
him off," he turned to Davies and asked him what was the com 
mon price of an oak stick ; but an oak stick in Johnson's hand anc 
an oak stick in Goldsmith's hands were two different things. How 
ever, to the bookseller's shop the indignant poet proceeded, in 
company with a friend ; got hold of Evans ; accused him of havino 
insulted a young lady by putting her name in his paper ; and, when 
the publisher would fain have shifted the responsibility on to 
the editor, forthwith denounced him as a rascal, and hit him over 
the back with his cane. The publisher, however, was quite a 
match for Goldsmith ; and there is no saying how the deadly 
combat might have ended, had not a lamp been broken over- 
head, the oil of which drenched both the warriors. This inter- 
vention of the superior gods was just as successful as a Homeric 
cloud ; the fray ceased ; Goldsmith and his friend withdrew ; and 
ultimately an action for assault was compromised by Goldsmith's 
paying fifty pounds to a charity. Then the howl of the journals 
arose. Their prerogative had been assailed. "Attacks upon private 
character were the most liberal existing source of newspaper in- 
come," Mr. Forster writes ; and so the pack turned with one cry 
on the unlucky poet. There was nothing of "the Monument" 
about poor Goldsmith ; and at last he was worried into writing a 
letter of defence addressed to the public. " He has indeed done 
it very well," said Johnson to Boswell, " but it is a foolish thing 
well done." And further he remarked, " Why, sir, I believe it is 
the first time he has beat ; he may have deefi beaten before. This, 
sir, is a new plume to him." 



GOLDSMITH. ^j 



CHAPTER XVII. 

INCREASING DIFFICULTIES. — THE END. 

The pecuniary success of She Stoops to Congtier did but little 
to relieve Goldsmith from those financial embarrassments which 
were now weighing heavily on his mind. And now he had less of 
the old high spirits that had enabled him to laugh off the cares of 
debt. His health became disordered; an old disease renewed its 
attacks, and was grown more violent because of his long-continued 
sedentary habits. Indeed, from this point to the day of his death 
— not a long interval, either— we find little but a record of succes- 
sive endeavours, some of them.vvild and hopeless enough, to obtain 
money anyhow. Qf course he went to the Club, as usual ; and 
gave dinner-parties ; and had a laugh or a song ready for the oc- 
casion. It is possible, also, to trace a certain growtli of confidence 
in himself, no doubt the result of the repeated proofs of his genius 
he had put before his friends. It was something more than mere 
personal intimacy that justified the rebuke he administered to 
Reynolds when the latter painted an allegorical picture represent- 
ing the triumph of Beattie and Truth over Voltaire and Scep- 
ticism. " It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and char- 
acter," he said, '' to debase so high a genius as Voltaire before 
so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie and his book will be forgot- 
ten in ten years, while Voltaire's fame will last forever. Take 
care it does not perpetuate this picture, to the shame of such a 
man as you." He was aware, too, of the position he had^won for 
himself in English literature. He knew that people in after-days 
would ask about him ; and it was with no sort of unwarrantable 
vainglory that he gave Percy certain matei-ials for a biography 
which he wished him to undertake. Hence the Pe?-cy Memoir. 

He was only forty-five when he made this request ; and he had 
not suffered much from illness during his life ; so that there was 
apparently no grounds for imagining that the end was near. But 
at this time Goldsmith began to suffer severe fits of depression ; 
and he grew irritable and capricious of temper — no doubt another 
result of failing health. He was embroiled in disputes with the 
booksellers ; and, on one occasion, seems to have been much hurt 
because Johnson, who hpd been asked to step in as arbiter, decided 
against him. He was ol nded with Johnson on another occasion 
because of his sending away certain dishes at a dinner given to 
him by Goldsmith, as a hint that these entertainments were too 



02 GOLDSMITH, 

luxurious for one in Goldsmith's position. It was probably owing 
to some temporary feeling of this sort — perhaps to some expres- 
sion of it on Goldsmith's part — that Johnson spoke of Goldsmith's 
" malice " towards him. Mrs. Thrale had suggested that Gold- 
smith would be the best person to write Johnson's biography. 
" The dog would write it best, to be sure," said Johnson, " but his 
particular malice towards me, and general disregard of truth, would 
make the book useless to all and injurious to my character." Of 
course it is always impossible to say what measure of jocukr ex- 
aggeration there may not be in a chance phrase such as this : of 
the fact that there was no serious or permanent quarrel between 
the two friends we have abundant proof in Boswell's faithful pages. 

To return to the various endeavours made by Goldsmith and 
his friends to meet the difficulties now closing in around him, we 
find first of all, the familiar hack-work. For two volumes of a 
History of Greece he. hdid. received from Griffin ;!^25o. Then his 
friends tried to get him a pension from the Government ; but this 
was definitely refused. An expedient of his own seemed to prom- 
ise well at first. He thought of bringing out ?i Popular Dictionaiy 
of Arts a?id Sciences, a. series of contributions mostly by his friends, 
with himself as editor ; and among those who offered to assist him 
were Johnson, Reynolds, Eurke, and Dr. Burney. But the book- 
sellers were afraid. The project would involve a large expense ; 
and they had no high opinion of Goldsmith's business habits. 
Then he offered to alter The Good natured Man for Garrick ; but 
Garrick preferred to treat with him for a new comedy, and gener- 
ously allowed him to draw on him for the money in advance. This 
last help enabled him to go to Barton for a brief holiday; but the 
relief was only temporary. On his return to London even his near- 
est fiiends began to observe the change in his manner. In the 
old days Goldsmith had faced pecuniary difficulties with a light 
heart ; but now, his health broken, and every avenue of escape 
apparently closed, he was giving way to despair. His friend Cra- 
dock, coming up to town, found Goldsmith in a most despondent 
condition; and also hints that the unhappy author was trying to 
conceal the true state of affairs. " I believe," said Cradock, "he 
died miserable, and that his friends were not entirely aware of his 
distress." 

And yet it was during this closing period of anxiety, despon- 
dency, and gloomy foreboding that the brilliant and humorous lines 
of Retaliation were written — thai last scintillation of the bright and 
happy genius that was soon to be extinguished forever. The most 
varied accounts have been given of the origin of this jeu d^esprit ; 
and even Garrick's, which was meant to supersede and correct all 
others, is self-contradictory. For according to this version of the 
story, which was found among the Garrick papers, and which is 
printed in Mr. Cunningham's edition of Goldsmith's works, the 
whole thing arose out of Goldsmith and Garrick resolving one 
evening at the St. James's Coffec-House to write each other's epi- 
taph. Garrick's well-known couplet was instantly produced: 



COLDSMITH. 93 

"Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, 
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll." 

Goldsmith, according to Garrick, either would not or could not 
retort at the moment ; " but went to work, and some weeks after 
produced the following printed poem, called Retaliation.^^ But 
Garrick himself goes on to say, "The following poems in manu- 
script were written by several of the gentlemen on purpose to pro- 
voke the Doctor to an answer, which came forth at last with great 
credit to him in Retaliation.''^ The most probable version of the 
story, whicli may be pieced together from various sources, is that 
at the coffee-house named this business of writing comic epitaphs 
was started some evening or other by the whole company ; that 
Goldsmith and Garrick pitted themselves against each other ; tha^ 
thereafter Goldsmith began as occasion served to write similar 
squibs about his friends, which were shown about as they were 
written; that thereupon those gentlemen, not to be behindhand, 
composed more elaborate pieces in proof of their wit ; and that, 
finally. Goldsmith resolved to bind these fugitive lines of his to- 
gether in a poem, which he left unfinished, and which, under the 
name of Retaliation., was published after his death. This hypo- 
thetical account receives some confirmation from the fact that the 
scheme of the poem and its component parts do not fit together 
well ; the introduction looks like an afterthought, and has not the 
freedom and pungency of a piece of improvisation. An imaginary- 
dinner is described, the guests being Garrick, Reynolds, Burke. 
Cumberland, and the rest of them. Goldsmith last of all. More 
wine is called for, until the whole of his companions have fallen 
beneath the table : 

Then, with chaos and blunders encircling my head, 
Let me ponder, and tell what I think of the dead.'" 

This is a somewhat clumsy excuse for introducing a series of 
epitaphs ; but the epitaphs amply atone for it. That on Garrick is 
especially remarkable as a bit of character-sketching ; its shrewd 
hints— all in perfect courtesy and good-humour — going a little 
nearer to the truth than is common in epitaphs of any sort : 

" Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can ; 
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man. 
As an actor, confessed without rival to shine: 
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line : 
Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart, 
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. 
Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread. 
And beplastered with rouge his own natural red. 
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting ; 
'Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting. 
With no reason on earth to go out of his way. 
He turned and he varied full ten times a day : 
Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick 



^4 GOLDSMITH. 

If they were not his own by finessing and trick ; 

He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack, 

For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back. 

Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came ; 

And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame ; 

Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, 

Who peppered the highest was surest to please 

But let us be candid, and speak out our mind : 

If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. 

Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, 

What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave f 

How did Grub Street re-echo the shouts that you raised, 

While he was be-Rosciused, and you were bepraised. 

Bat peace to his spirit, wherever it flies, 

To act as an angel and mix with the skies : 

Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill 

Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will ; 

Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love, 

And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above." 

The truth is that Goldsmith, though he was ready to bless his 
" honest little man " when he received from him sixty pounds in 
advance for a comedy not begun, never took quite so kindly to 
Garrick as to some of his other friends. There is no pretence of 
discrimination at all, for example, in the lines devoted in this poem 
to Reynolds. All the generous enthusiasm of Goldsmith's Irish 
nature appears here ; he will admit of no possible rival to this 
especial friend of his : 

" Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, 
He has not left a wiser or better behind." 

There is a tradition that the epitaph on Reynolds, ending with the 
unfinished line 

" By flattery unspoiled 

was Goldsmith's last piece of writing. One would like to believe 
that, in any case. 

Goldsmith had returned to his Edgware lodgings, and had, in- 
deed, formed some notion of selling his chambers in the Temple, 
and living in the country for at least ten months in the year, when 
a sudden attack of his old disorder drove him into town again for 
medical advice. He would appear to have received some relief; 
but a nervous fever followed ; and on the night of the 25th March, 
1774, when he was but forty-six years of age, he took to his bed 
for the last time. At first he refused to regard his illness as 
serious, and insisted on dosing himself with certain fever-powders 
from wdiich he had received benefit on previous occasions ; but by 
and by as his strength gave way he submitted to the advice of the 
physicians, who were in attendance on him. Day after day passed, 
his weakness visibly increasing, though, curiously enough, the 
symptoms of fever were gradually abating. At length one of the 
doctors, remarking to him that his pulse was in greater disorder 



GOLDSMITH. ^g 

than it should be from the degree of fever, asked him if his mind 
was at ease. " No, it is not," answered Goldsmith; and these 
were his last words. Early in the morning of Monday, April 4th, 
convulsions set in ; these continued for rather more than an hour; 
then the troubled brain and the sick heart found rest forever. 

When the news was carried to his friends, Burke, it is said, 
burst into tears, and Reynolds put aside his work for the day. 
But it does not appear that they had visited him during his illness ; 
and neither Johnson nor Reynolds, nor Burke, nor Garrick followed 
his body to the grave. It is true, a public funeral was talked of; 
and, among others, Reynolds, Burke, and Garrick were to have 
carried the pall; but this was abandoned; and Goldsmitli was 
privately buried in the ground of the Temple Church on the 9th of 
April, 1774. Strangely enough, too, Johnson seems to have 
omitted all mention of Goldsmith from his letters to Boswell. It 
was not until Boswell had written to him, on June 24th, " You have 
said nothing to me about poor Goldsmith," that Johnson, writing 
on July 4th, answered as follows : '' Of poor dear Dr. Goldsmith 
there is little to be told, more than the papers have made public. 
He died of a fever, made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness 
of mind. His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources were 
exhausted. Sir Joshua is of opinion that he owed not less than 
two thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before 1 " 

But if the greatest grief at the sudden and premature death of 
Goldsmith would seem to have been shown at the nftment by cer- 
tain wretched creatures who were found weeping on the stairs 
leading to his chambers, it must not be supposed that his fine 
friends either forgot him, or ceased to regard his memory with a 
great gentleness and kindness. Some two years after, when a 
monument was about to be erected to Goldsmith in Westminster 
Abbey, Johnson consented to write "the poor dear Doctor's 
epitaph ; " and so anxious were the members of that famous circle 
in which Goldsmith had figured, that a just tribute should be paid 
to his genius, that they even ventured to send a round-robin to the 
great Cham desiring him to amend his first draft. Now, perhaps, 
we have less interest in Johnson's estimate of Goldsmith's genius — 
though it contains the famous Ahdluni qiiod tetigit nofi oniavit — 
than in the phrases which tell of the honour paid to the memory of 
the dead poet by the love of his companions and the faithfulness 
of his friends. It may here be added that the precise spot where 
Gojdsmith was buried in the Temple church-yard is unknown. So 
lived and so died Oliver Goldsmith. 



In the foregoing pages the writings of Goldsmith have been 
given so prominent a place in the history of his life that it is unne- 
cessary to take them here collectively and endeavour to sum up their 
distinctive qualities. As much as could be said within the limited 
space has, it is hoped, been said about their genuine and tender 



9^ . GOLDSMITH. 

pathos, that never at any time verges on the affected or theatrical ; 

about their quaint, delicate, deh"ghtful humour ; about that broader 
humour that is not afraid to provoke the wholesome laughter of man- 
kind by dealing with common and familiar ways, and manners and 
men ; about that choiceness of diction, that lightness and grace of 
touch, that lend a charm even to Goldsmith's ordinary hack-work. 

Still less necessary, perhaps, is it to review the facts and cir- 
cumstances of Goldsmith's life, and to make of them an example, 
a warning, or an accusation. That has too often been done. His 
name has been used to glorify a sham Bohemianism — a Bohemian- 
ism that finds it easy to live in taverns, but does not find it easy, so 
far as one sees, to write poems like the Deserted Village. His ex- 
periences as an author have been brought forward to swell the cry 
about neglected genius — that is, by writers who assume their genius 
in order to prove the neglect. The misery that occasionally be- 
fell him during his wayward career has been made the basis of an 
accusation against society, the English constitution, Christianity 
— Heaven knows what. It is time to have done with all this non- 
sense. Goldsmith resorted to the hack-work of literature when 
every thing else had failed him; and he was fairly paid for it. 
When he did better work, when he " struck for honest fame," the 
nation gave him all the honour that he could have desired. With 
an assured reputation, and with ample means of subsistence, he 
obtained entrance into the most distinguished society then in 
England — he was made the friend of Engfland's greatest in the 
arts and literature — and could have confined himself to that society 
exclusively if he had chosen. His temperament, no doubt, exposed 
him to suffering; and the exquisite sensitiveness of a man of 
genius may demand our sympathy; but in far greature measure is 
our sympathy demanded for the thousands upon thousands of 
people who, from illness or nervous excitability, suffer from quite 
as keen a sensitiveness without the consolation of the fame that 
genius brings. 

In plain truth, Goldsmith himself would have been the last to 
put forward pleas humiliating alike to himself and to his calling. 
Instead of beseeching the State to look after authors ; instead of 
imploring society to grant them '' recognition ; " instead of saying 
of himself *'he wrote^ and paid the penalty;" he would frankly 
have admitted that he chose to live his life his own way, and there- 
fore paid the penalty. This is not written with any desire of up- 
braiding Goldsmith. He did choqse to live his own life his own 
way, and we now have the splendid and beautiful results of his 
work; and the world — looking at these with a constant admiration, 
and with a great and lenient love for their author — is not anxious 
to know what he did with his guineas, or whether the milkman was 
ever paid. " He had raised money and squandered it, by every 
artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. But let not his 

FRAILTIES BE REMEMBERED : HE WAS A VERY GREAT MAN." 

This is Johnson's wise summing up ; and with it we may here take 
leave of gentle Goldsmith. 



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113. More Words About the Bible, 

by Rev. Jas. S. Bush 20 

114. MonsieurLecoq, GaboriauPt.I..20 
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115. An Outline of Irish History, by 

Justin H. McCarthy 10 

1 ] 6. The Lerouge Case, by Gaboriau. . 20 

117. Paul Clifford, by Lord Lytton. . .20 

1 18. A New Lease of Life, by About . . 20 

119. Bourbon Lilies 20 

120. Other People'* Money, Gaboriau 20 

121. The Lady of Lyons, Lytton. ..10 

122. Ameline de Bourg 15 

123. A Sea Queen, by W. Russell ... .20 

124. The Ladie» Lindores, by Mrt. 

Oliphant .- 20 

125. Haunted Hearts, by Simpson. ...10 

126. Loys, I ord Beresford, by The 

. Duchess 20 

127. Under Two Flags, Oaida, Pt. I. . 15 
TJuder Two Flags, Pt. II 15 

128. Money, by Lord Lytton 10 

129. In Peril of Hi3Life,byGaboriau.20 
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131. Jets and Flashes 20 

132. Mooushine an(J Mfiir^erites, by 

The Duchess". ' 10 

133. Mr. Scarborough's Family, by 

Anthony Trollope, Part 1 15 

Mr. Scarborough'sFamily, PtII 15 

134. Arden, by A. Mary F. Robinson. 15 

135. The Tower of Percemont 20 

130. Yolande, by Wm. Black 20 

137. Cruel London, by Joseph Hatton.20 

138. The Gilded Cl'qne, by Gaboriau.20 

139. Pike County Folks, E. H. Mott. .20 

140. Cricket on the Hearth 10 

141. Henry Esmond, by Thackeray. .20 

142. Strange Adventures of a Phae- 

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143. Denis Duval, by Thackeray 10 

144. Old Curiosity Shop,Dicken8,PtI. 15 
Old Curiosity Shop, Part II. .. .15 

145. Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part 1 15 

Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part II 15 

146. White Wings, by Wm. Black.. 20 

147. The Sketch Book, by Irving 20 

148. Catherine, by W. M. Thackeray. 10 

149. Janet's Repentance, by Eliot 10 

150. Barnaby Rudge. Dickens, Pt I. . 15 
Barnaby Rudge, Part II 15 

151. Felix Holt, b/ George Eliot. ...20 

1.52. Richelieu, by Lord Lytton 10 

153. Sunrise, by Wm. Black, Part I. .15 

Sunrise, by Wm. Black. Part 11.15 
1.54. Tour of the World in 80 Days.. 20 
155. Mystery of Orcival, Gaboriau. , . .20 
15t5. Lovel, the Widower, by W. M. 

Thackeray 10 

157. Romantic Adventures of a Milk- 

maid, by Thomas Hardv 10 

158. David Copperfield, Dickens.Pt 1.20 
David Copperfield, Part II 80 

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Rienzi, by Lord Lytton. Part II . 15 

161. Promise of Marriage, Gaboriau.. 10 

162. Faith and Un faith, by The 

Duchess SO 



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185. 



186. 

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190. 
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194. 
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196. 
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198. 
199. 



200. 
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202. 
1'03. 
204. 
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206. 
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208. 

209. 



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Barry Lyndon, by Thackeray.... 20 

Eyre's Acquittal 10 

Twenty Thoupand Leagues Un- 
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Anti-Slavery Days, by James 

Freeman Clarke 30 

Beauty's Daughters, by The 

Duchess 30 

Beyond the Sunrise 20 

Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. 20 
Tom Cringle s Log, by M. Scott. .20 
Vanity Fair, by W M,Thacker»y.20 
Underground Russia, Stepniak..20 
Middlemarch. by Elliot, Pt I.... 20 

W iddlemarch. Part II 20 

Sir Tom, by Mrs. Oliphant 20 

Pelham, by Lord Lytton 20 

The Story of Ida 10 

Madcap Violet, by Wm. Black.. 20 

The Little Pilgrim 10 

Kilmeny, by Wm. Black 20 

Whist, or Bumblepuppy? 10 

The Beautiful Wretch, Black.... 20 
Her Mother's Sin, by B. M. Clay.20 
Green Pastures and Piccadilly, 

by Wm, Black 20 

The Mysterious Island, by Jules 

Verne, Part I.... 15 

The Mysterious Island, Part II. . 15 
The Mysterious Island, Part III. 15 
Tom Brawn at Oxford, Part I ... 15 
Tom Brown at Oxford, Part II. . 15 
Thicker than Water, by J. Payn.20 
In Silk Attire, by Wm. Black. . .20 
Scottish Chiefs.Jane Porter,Pt.I.20 

Scottish Chiefs, Part II 20 

Willy Reilly.by Will Carleton..20 
The Nauta Family, by Shelley.20 
Great Expectations, by Dickens. 20 
Pendennis.by Thackeray, Part 1.20 
Pendennis by Thackeray ,Part 11.20 

Widow Bedott Papers 20 

Daniel Deronda.Geo. Eliot,Pt, 1.20 

Daniel Deronda, Part II 20 

AltioraPeto, by Oliphant 20 

By the Gate of the Sea, by David 

Christie Murray 15 

Tales of a Traveller, by Irving. . .20 
Life and Voyages of Columbus, 

by Washington Irving, Part I. .20 
Life and Voyages of Columbus, 

by Washington Irving, Part 11.20 

The Pilgrim's Progress 20 

Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles 

Dickens, Part 1 20 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Part II 20 

Theophrastus Such, Geo. Eliot. . . 20 
Disarmed, M. Betham-Edwards..l5 
Eugene Aram, by Lord Lytton. 20 
The >*panish Gypsy and Other 

Poems, by George Eliot 20 

Cast Up by the Sea. Baker 20 

Mill on the Floss, Eliot, Pt. I. 15 

Mill on the Floss, Part II 15 

Brother Jacob, and Mr. Gilfll's 

Love Story, by George Eliot. . .10 
Wrecks iu the Sea of Life 20 



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